The AR Show: Dana Chermesh (inCitu) on Visualizing and Engaging in the Future of Our Cities

6:33PM Mar 28, 2022

Speakers:

Jason McDowall

Dana Chermesh

Keywords:

people

city

tel aviv

community

developers

built

world

development

ar

big

develop

bauhaus

intrapreneurs

buildings

institute

neighborhood

architect

ceo

preserve

urban development

Welcome to the AR show where I dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology, the use cases and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall. Today's conversation is with Dana Chermesh, founder and CEO of inCitu, an augmented-reality-powered civic engagement app that democratizes city planning, then is an architect from Tel Aviv, Israel and an alumna of the NYU master's program in urban data science. During her career as an architect. She specialized in urban renewal and developed a passion for leveraging technology, data and innovation to form smarter, more resilient and more justice cities and city processes. In 2019, Dana co-founded inCitu to bring together data and discourse with the aid of augmented reality helping citizens see the future of their cities. InCitu was incubated inside Eric Schmidt's social impact Venture Fund. In this conversation, we discuss Dana's deep love and appreciation for cities and urban development. We talked about our goal of developing viable, dynamic data driven tools to empower residents and leaders to better deal with 21st century urban challenges.

We will be able to walk down the street and turn on a layer of the future everywhere in the world, like you can get Google Streetview. Right. To me, seeing this vision happening is much more important than what exit strategy it has or how big it will be. How much will it be sold for? 2x? I don't know. I mean, of course, I wanted to be also successful and financially successful and I want to succeed. But I think that the mission is bigger than the company or, of course the knee, the CEO.

We go on to discuss Dana's experience at Schmidt futures her perspective on the concept of the metaverse and founding a company while being the mother of young children. As reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show.com. Let's dive in.

Dana, you're the mother of three young kids living in Brooklyn. As a parent with my own girls, I tend to worry about losing them when visiting someplace like Disneyland or with a big city. Have you ever had a scare as a parent or or maybe as when you were a child?

So if funny or not so funny, if you asked my mother's story about this topic, is when I was 11 and a half years old, we visited me and my parents and my sister and brother here in New York, for the first time was late 90s. So all their kidnapping, I guess their stories were hot. And my mom, of course anyway was like a Jewish mom was scared about everything. And we went down to the subway, and the train just came, I ran first and gutting and the doors were closed. The end of the story that my mom like crazily just put herself on the doors and the doors were open at the end. But my memory and she remembers it of course, like one of the most scariest things that ever happened to her. I was not afraid. Like at all. I wasn't worried. And even after that happened, they asked me what would you do if the train would just go? And of course, the right answer is to go down in the next station. But in an 11 year old girl mind like it's around half of the train. So I told them I would just stay on the train. And thank God the doors were open. But even after I they told me like, okay, no, if it happens again, you go out of the train the next station. I remember I wasn't afraid like somehow, since a very early childhood, I felt good in cities. And in crazy cities like New York, and I know that I fell in love in New York back then not in this specific story. But in that visit as a mother. I first I'm not very anxious mother like compared to Jewish moms, I guess. Of course, I keep my loved ones safe. And yeah, I mean, to me, I feel more safe in this type of urban environment than in a sleepy neighborhood that that no one is around. And this is like the Jane Jacobs type of observation of eyes on the streets, right? I feel safe when other people

are there. You discover your love of New York City on that particular trip. But you already growing up in one of the great cities of the world. You're growing up near and around in within Tel Aviv. That's right.

whoever is listening to us has never been to Tel Aviv by recommend. This is really best city in the world. It's amazing. It's beautiful. The weather is great. The food is the best. But yeah, I grew up near Tel Aviv in Lima now which is like a suburb a real city of its own but not Tel Aviv. The if you ask me Tel Aviv is the almost only real city in Israel. Of course Jerusalem and Haifa are another two but Tel Aviv is the best out of the And although I didn't grow up in Tel Aviv, I'm a granddaughter of four born and raised tel Vivian's, which is very unique as a third generation, to the Holocaust, Israeli, to have our grandparents generation all born in Israel, and specifically in Tel Aviv. So my grandparents, all of them lived in Tel Aviv, when I was a child, and my parents grew up in Tel Aviv. So to me, televi was the real city and also the real home like I remember, basically, every memory that I have from my four grandparents is rooted in Tel Aviv streets, either walking with them, or experiencing with them or hearing their stories of Tel Aviv of the 1930s. I grew up with this heritage of Tel Aviv as the 1930s that have even then the 1960s and 70s of my parents, Tel Aviv, and then the 1990s, as a child experiencing with her parents and grandparents. So yeah, I think it's obvious by now that I love this city with all my heart, I think relocating from it. I don't know if it's nice or not nice to say. But the thing that I really miss in terms of something that hurts my heart and my guts, is the city and its streets, feels like people, you can stay connected to them. And I'm pretty good in staying connected with friends and family. It's hard, then the distance, but the city is something that I really feel how much I miss it.

What was so unique about Tel Aviv from your perspective,

so Tel Aviv is the most amazing balance or clash. Depends how you look at it between the European values and the American values. So televi was built in the early 19, early to mid 1900s, from the 1920s with the Bauhaus movement, and Germany coming into Israel, settling in the north of Jaffa back then, and starting to develop Tel Aviv through the 1930s and 40s, that most of the Tel Aviv White City, what it's called today under UNESCO, was built under this modernism values Bauhaus, minimalism, and socio economic type of values and I guess agenda, but around the 1990s and of course, this is only getting more and more like this, all the Americanization of the urban scape started to really be apparent in the just in the built environment. From the three to four, Bauhaus, Garden City urban design type of city, you suddenly see like pop ups of towers high rises, you suddenly see these preserved Bauhaus being becoming like a museum puppets or babushkas, because there are so expensive to preserve them. So they are either deteriorating or are being preserved into something that very limited people can live in them. So I think and you still today, you walk down the streets, even decades after these two movements are forces, you walk around the streets of Tel Aviv, seeing these two built environments, literally clashing or dancing with one another. And to me, I think it's dancing, because even the planning rules of the city tells you that if a lot is going to be preserved, you can transfer its development rights to our or to a lot that could develop more. So it looks like a clash between the Americanization and the old Bauhaus movement. But actually they are kind of working together with one another. And I think that's very special. If you know how to look at it. It's pretty amazing.

How did your relationship and your perspective with the city change after you became an architect,

like as an architecture student, I started looking from an urbanism point of view on the city and specifically on how cities change. And I felt that like in architecture school, they teach you how to be responsible for your designs and the impact of your designs. But eventually, design is only one part of urban change. Like you have the planning rules, of course, but you have history that is so rooted in the everyday lives and experience of the city. And you have politics of course and you have financial pressures and you have the overall like geopolitics of the world that kind of resulting in the local urban change. You have grassroots forces and social movements like that. 2011 housing protests in town Leave, and you have top down and bottom up. And all of this is kind of resulting in urban change. And one thing I haven't said is that when my childhood and my architecture studies I served in the army as most Israelis do, and I was a flight simulator, instructor, trainer of F 15 pilots in the Israeli Air Force. And being that like doing that for three years being at the forefront of innovation, and observing how this smart visualization tool, truly transform the very risky and complex process of in flight or function training, to become much more efficient, much more iterative, much safer and less expensive process. And then to become an architect and seeing the most impactful product in the world, which is cities, not using any type of innovation or technology. In understanding the process. I've felt just a real, I could address in terms of like, why cities do not use in cities and cities development or not using the same type of smart tools and visualization tools and kinds of data tools to better understand this complex process of city development or urban renewal. And I always imagined, and that's kind of resulting in my vision and inCitu, my company, and vision, the world where cities future can be simulated, and can be experienced in a more immersive way. And I imagine people walking down the street, raising their phone, or through AR glasses, just turning on the layer of the future of cities.

Later, the future of the cities will come back to some of these threads. In a city, especially a city like this that has so much history exposed through the buildings and through its continued development. What are the big challenges in continuing to evolve that urban landscape?

To me, I think the big challenge is how to really kind of preserve what should we preserve, like the really the Bauhaus, the White City, like you want to leave something to the next generations. And the challenge is how to do it without making your overall city to a museum. Because what's happening with preservation, and I'm very, I think I can say that I kind of against areas, full areas preservation, because I think that's dangerous to a city and to city life. It's okay to preserve landmarks, of course, and it's important to kind of think of how to preserve that. But you need to be very careful of not incentivizing to first just neglect buildings, because if it's so expensive to and there is no financial upside of development, buildings will just get deteriorated like they are, or the only people who will be able to preserve and maintain them will be very, very affluent people. So we get like this situation of half deteriorating, have to expensive buildings that regular people cannot live in either of them. And then you're kind of like seeing a process of emptying cities from real residents, you see, like, second and third apartments being bought and developed by people who never live there. So we literally, if you walk down the street like this at 8:30pm, you will see dark, like you will not see windows with lights in them. And I think that's kind of a red light for a city. And I think city planners should think carefully about the counter productive planning, I would say like you want to preserve, but then the question is, what are you preserving reserve, just the buildings, or you tried to reserve some kind of activity that resulted from this specific urban design? And I think that's the that's the challenge to kind of keep life going as you try to preserve values or activities in a city.

You made the decision to go from Israel's great city to one of the US great cities, you moved to New York to pursue a master's degree at NYU. What do you hope to gain by coming to New York and going to NYU?

So first, again, as you understood by now, I love real cities and what other real city is there besides New York, right, like worldwide? So I truly feel that I the best two cities in the world are my homes. So Tel Aviv and Brooklyn specifically, and not just New York. So first that the motivation in moving to New York and to do the master's degree in Caspian Center for Open Science of progress was that frustration about how non innovative my profession was, and the fact that very unique and advanced And in specific masters like urban data science and informatics, you cannot find them in a small place like Israel, unfortunately. And you can find them here. Secondly, coming and kind of extending my toolbox as an architect or urbanist towards more data driven innovation driven tools. The best laboratory in the world for cities is New York, I could say that, yeah, maybe Tel Aviv too, but you cannot argue about the size and complexity of New York City, right. So this is the best place to test these advanced ideas. Like, crazy, amazing, beautiful, ugly and bad and good city like New York, right. And I love New York, since I'm a small girl, I guess my love to cities went through here as well. If we're talking about cities as carriers of values, and creators of societies, New York is much more diverse than Tel Aviv, Israel overall is not as diverse as I would want it to be. And they moved here with a family. So we two babies, actually, they were 18 months old, when we move, I have twins, they're six years old today, and they have small sister already, by now. But in thinking of where we are going to raise our family, I wanted the city that naturally through the city itself, brings values to my children. And I think New York and specifically Brooklyn, is much more diverse, tolerant, open and liberal, even more than Tel Aviv with, with all of my love to Tel Aviv, Israel. And that was kind of the two major reasons for choosing your first opportunity, like the professional opportunity. And the specific of the problem that I'm trying to solve. And then just where and how I want to raise my kids

is definitely something very conscious clearly about the decision making process for you, as you think about how does this impact not on myself, but your whole family, and the imprint that that will make on your children over time. But when it when it comes to the practice of urban development? In this this attraction, you had the NYU program that was about data science and informatics around urbanization. How is it that data can play a role in improving our communities?

So I think data and technology overall its role in improving communities is who has the information, like who is empowered, who has the power to know even what's going on. And I think urban development is such an impactful process on people's lives, even if they know nothing about it. And even if they don't know that it's so impactful, like, this is the built environment in which we spend our lives in which we raise our children, right, in which we commute and we dine and have fun and work and learn and whatever. And the way it's developing, really affecting us it's affect effecting, will we be able to stay on live there? Are the streets safe for our kids? Right? Who are the neighbors? Like? Are the neighbors look exactly like me or look different? And who are the babysitter's that I can get to my kids? The result of all of this is rooted in urban planning, really, like in city planning? What you can what the land can be used for? Do you have a neighborhood with mixed uses? Do you have small businesses or more like, huge retail? Do you have trucks all over the place? Because there are so many last mile warehouses? Or do you prefer like shop local. So I think all of these results and the small aspects of our lives that make our lives what they are, are rooted in city planning. And the fact that most people do not even understand the connection and don't know anything about the process makes it easier for the people who control the process to make it to their benefits. So either strong politicians or strong NIMBY type of people not in my backyard, type of liberals at se, or very sharp developers, real estate developers, and I don't think any of them is evil. It's just people try to maximize their benefits, I guess or to optimize their positions and that's okay. But to your question, what role data can play? It can just inform more people and in a democratic society, the more people the more people are, I guess informed and better informed and am Powered, the more interesting society and processes you will get, because you'll get more input into the process. And that's kind of also what I'm trying to do with inCitu, in my company to just like, make the case of why the product that is city is impactful, why we shouldn't be accountable for it and treat it as the most important product in the world, and why more people need to be able to do something about it.

So you have this perspective that this democratization of the information of what could come or what is planned to come will help us all have a more engaged in a broader decision about what we want within our communities? That kind of is the the genesis for what you're doing inCitu, right? How does that boil down to the practice, like what is the the hypothesis and how you're going to bring that benefit to bear through inCitu?

I guess the good news are that we at Institute, we don't need to change any regulation, like everything that we just discussed, that I fight for, to become accessible, is legally publicly available. It's open to the public, you can look and actively search for ongoing development in your area, you can find the city community board meeting, public hearing to come and attend and raise your voice, you have emails that you can send you, you can do all of that. So we don't need to change anything, or even advocate for anything to be changed, like it's already there. It's just so out of reach, and so inaccessible to people that the way the process is working today, is still incentivizing only the two very radical parts of urban development, which are the people who really want development to happen, or specific projects to happen. And the people who will do anything to prevent it from happening. And I argue or my, my belief is that most people that are in between, like it's too easy to say, oh, people don't care. They don't, they will never engage. They don't care. They just have their lives and everything. I don't think that's true, I think most of us do care, do want to be part of and we want to be better positioned and better informed. But we necessarily don't want to become activists like I even made that I think this is fascinating. And zoning is fascinating. And I know most people don't think that but even me, I don't want to spend four hours of my evening. And I literally can't because I have small children on a community board meeting. And I don't want to spend all of my energy in fighting for or against or whatever, some development, I want to know what's going on. I want to have an very, very easy access to say what I think what I need, what will make me more supportive of X development, what I'm concerned about, like, I'm concerned about the safety of my girls, when they walk down the street, I am concerned about community facility, facilities or green space says or will it be a nightmare to commute at 8am If a 200 units will come near my house. So I want a way to raise these concerns. And I want to believe that there is someone in the other side to incorporate these concerns and improve the plans, according to them. So that's kind of that this is our mission is to first make whatever is available, also accessible. And then to align the stakeholders interests of the city development, because I don't believe as I said before, that, you know, you have the evil or good people in this process, like you have a bunch of motivations and bunch of interests. And I think that women planning historically, was a very top down profession, you have the Robert Moses area of like, the big planner just comes and throws the plans on the table and everyone need to execute. And I think if we're going back to the question of technology and data technology today, could balance this top down with bottom up in a way that is less of a fight, but more of a conversation between that top down and bottom up.

And how does Institute do that? How does institchu facilitate that conversation?

So we work both like work on in these three levels of the city, and like the processes and just make them accessible and directly with developers. We believe that developers want to do good. We believe that they want to improve places and we help them better communicate their projects with residents and to really get to this broader audience of participants the way we do it. So from the City Life Again, as I said, before the information is out there, all we need to do is to make it accessible. And what we are launching these days but will be officially launched after Passover and Easter beginning of the spring is a campaign in which we proactively populating our app with all the ongoing development in New York. So everything that is out there will be available in AR as you walk down the street, through an app, so you can find first planning information. Second, you can experience it in augmented reality on site. And third, you can participate through the app. And the campaign will be from the community board level, through influencers and social media and next door and Facebook and Instagram, and Snapchat, and with this specific developers of this project, that working with us, they'll be much more attractive to kind of reach out to communities and say, Hey, this is why this development will improve your community. Now, let me maybe step back and walk you through the process of why AR because we are here speaking about AR and I know we discussed cities and urban development so far. And many people that are not from the AR world are like, Hey, why AR like is it a gimmick why insisting on incorporating the AR just make an app that have like, a place to give feedback. And that's it right? I think that people overall, not just not professionals have a cognitive barrier in understanding the future of cities. So when we see first, when we read through zoning laws or building codes, if we read through it through them, it's very hard to understand what to FA our residential even means, even if you know what fer means, which is floor area ratio, basically, a number that tells you how much you can develop the density, let's say of their project. But even if you see a 2d rendering, usually we see these these renderings from a bird's eye view. None of us is a bird. So it doesn't give us much, it only freaks us out when we see 12 stories building in an area of three four storeys, residential neighborhood. And we miss understanding how this will literally function in its context. And that's why the the name inCitu, like we should be able to experience urban development and urban change in its real context, inCitu on site as we walk down the street, and we tested a few times in our previous pilots that we kind of told people or show them into the Okay, there is a development we did it in red, red hook, Brooklyn, I don't know if you know that neighborhood. Very interesting, most amazing neighborhood here, Waterfront Communities, so industrial spaces with public housing and kind of gentrifying area. So very tense, but interesting type of neighborhood three storeys, buildings, most of it. And there was a proposal to kind of take warehouse and redevelop it as the maker space with like, residential spaces. And people thought it's horrible. It was 12 stories that was supposed to come up on like commercial space, people from the neighborhood opposed to it strongly. And we came to them with it was the very early version of our product, but with an augmented reality view of how it will look like and the building was anchored to its place. So people could literally Surround the block and see it from anywhere. And not only would we projected 3d, but also we layered information on top of it. So how many housing will be in this project, how many jobs it will create and break to this neighborhood? How much affordable housing out of these housing units. And suddenly people understood the big picture of this, and they walk down the street, they figure out that these 12 floors are set back from the last line so they could barely see they were not shadowing the street at all. And they understood that suddenly, maybe there will be housing for the young people in these neighborhoods. And the biggest proposers of this specific development became the strongest advocates of it. Because they're like, oh, like, okay, it does not interrupt life, like the street life at all. And like the opposite is true. It's saving the neighborhood from its housing shortage. In another pilot that we had in Midtown, a very different Auburn reom and density. Midtown New York and near Penn Station. There was a proposal To relocate Madison Square Garden to kind of block and a half northeast to a block that will block the view to Empire State. And the we worked back then with community board five of Manhattan, which is the Midtown West Community Board. And the architectural firm that worked on this proposal pow if you know them practice for architecture and urbanism, very innovative and impressive company, but the community board members they were concerned. First, is it blocking the view to Empire State? And second, how will people react to this development. And first, the development does block the view to Empire State, like pretty aggressively it's 93 floors in front of Empire State Building. But what we did when we launched that pilot, we stood there, me and bunch of volunteers with like a huge QR code. And we just came to people and told them so there is a proposal to relocate Madison Square Garden, it will block the view to Empire State and it's 93 floors, what do you say? And people are like, Oh, horrible, of course, like it's ruining the neighborhood, right. But then we encourage them to scan the QR and to kind of see the AR and again, they could surround it so they could see it from anywhere. And suddenly, these 93 floors in the middle of midtown, New York looked like another big building, right? Like, everything here is being. So it made people kind of forget about the discussion about the height, and just questioning that the important questions, whether like, people came back with, how will the ground floor look like what businesses will be here? Where does the housing start? Is there no tell here? Yes or no? Is there affordable housing? What will happen to the existing businesses, all the questions that are the true essence and relevant issues of planning, and as an architect, back in my days in Tel Aviv, so as an architect, you're presenting projects to residents on behalf of developers. I've been yelled at not once, in these planning hearings, when you show your beautiful rendering that you design, right, like why can they see why it's so good? Why are they so pissed, and as a person who been through this not so fun experience many times, to me to see how literally at the very first morning that we launched, we just established a relevant, respectful conversation. That was mind blowing. And that happened again, and again, in our later pilots. So we did, we had two pilots in California over the summer. So I think back to why AR. I think augmented reality is truly powerful in overcoming this cognitive failure of understanding future development. And I also think that it's super important to talk about how powerful it is to improve real world processes, especially in these times of the hype of the metaverse, which I'm sorry, I'm not buying into it. Like I think that we intrapreneurs and our generation have responsibility for how this technology will evolve. And I think that the last generation failed in the how the social media technology will evolve, like there was this promise of it will make people closer, and it will increase democracy and will make people more tolerant and the opposite happen. And I think we need to kind of make sure that the very powerful technology of immersive technologies will be used first to improve this world. I am less interested in escaping to another world if you ask me, but just be used to really make sure that we bring more people to the table rather than polarizing and making more difficulties to connect and to be engaged.

Making the real world we live in better. That's fundamentally the goal. Yeah, in the practical elements of making this, this tool that you're creating a common part of every community. You talked about working with the cities themselves. And you talked about working with the developers who who ultimately pays How does incent you as a company, yeah, survive it and earn revenue. So

developers are paying even today for their community engagement efforts. So the way the process is working, if you're developing anything in the city, there is what's called as of right meaning you're developing according to the existing rules. You don't have to inform the public about it. But if you want to change anything, meaning more density, different use, let's say you want residential when you today can develop on the offices, something like that or different plotlines, you must inform the public about this change. So the process requires the difference doper to do a community outreach and to get public input and feedback on their plans. Today, the ways to do it are through PR, again the to do renderings, which are not helping anyone, beautiful websites, maybe lobbies, maybe community engagement, fears, maybe someone that does community engagement in house. But again, and again, no matter what they do, they get the same 10 people to the planning, hearing, and community meetings, to shout out know about everything. And it's usually the same type of people. Usually, these are affluent, old white male homeowners, if we need to generalize, who is participating through a very easy to access mobile app that also makes you seamlessly just grasp what this development is about, we can truly break the ceiling of this audience of participants. And we help developers first get to younger, more diverse, more broad and more representative audience. And second, we help them excite them through the AR. So we work with them to design the experience of okay, what information we want to show like, where do we want the discussion to go? Do we want to make sure they know that there is affordable housing here, or that we also develop the community facility in the ground floor, or that we develop the park in front of that building. So everything that is immersively connected to that development, we help them easily inform the public. So developers are our clients. See, these are important channels. Because if today, there is no real standard, or the standard of how you communicate, or how a developer should communicate planning is unclear. I mean, it could be the 2d renderings, it could be a website, I guess, bigger developers have more options in how to do cities are our channels to truly advocate and kind of proactively lifting the bar of how we should experience and communicate plan, whether some day we can be officially adopted by cities, yes or no, of course, I would like together. And that's our goal to eventually scale through the city level. So to come to the city and say, Hey, take this tool, let all developers plug in and immediately show that to everyone. But even until we get there, again, the information is publicly available. And developers have the motivation in working with us to just promote and de risk their projects. And I come to these potential clients with like, I try to encourage developers to engage early and even before the legal requirement to engage the public. And the reason is, and again, from my experience, as an architect, usually a developer comes to you at the beginning of the process, and like, hey, there is this law or block or sites give me like for development scenarios, right, and usually work on them like as an architect for six 812 months before someone in the city or in the community even sees that. And I argue that if we engage early, and as the institute gets more and more progress, we'll just have the data on communities, concerns and sentiment about different issues. We can de risk projects from a very early stage and save time and money on unnecessary scenarios to develop. So that's kind of the premise and why developers work with us.

We've touched on a bit about it already for a minute. But I wonder whether you can share again, how do you describe the impact that you want Institute to have on the communities that we live in?

I mean, eventually, the end goal is better product, like better planning. And I think that if more people will be involved, and will share their views. And with an easy effective engagement tool, we can really incorporate this feedback and make planning better, and cities better. So if we know that even the most data driven developers have no way to know that this specific community opposes these development, because there is some playground that parents really love, like, these information is not existing in any dataset, even in New York City, the most data rich city. So I think like if we have a very effective mechanism of a feedback loop between, again the different stakeholders of city development and cities, we can just have better conversation and better product at the end for all and I believe that it will make cities more resilient because resiliency is the community's first and foremost. When people are more engaged and when where people have better Cities and better environment to live in. So I believe in good design. I think bad design affects our, our health and our psychology greatly. Maybe that's also why I live in Brooklyn, because like, then the built environment is well designed. And I love working in an urban environment. That is, that makes me feel good. And I do believe that better design will result from better process, and I make the process better. And of course, if you want me to take it to the even higher level of resiliency, cities are facing great challenges with climate change with refugees and geopolitics and mass urbanization, and of course, pandemics and health issues. cities need to be able to change and adapt better. Today, we need to build more like there is no question to it, we need to build more housing, cities must build more housing period, to just populate all the people that are going to live in cities and in different urban areas in the world, we need to build more, we will need to be to build much more than that. And it's just getting harder and harder to do so. So when must make the process shorter, better, much more efficient. And I'm here to also make sure that most people have at least the ability to be part of it if they want,

who is Schmidt futures? And what does it mean to be an entrepreneur in residence? Yeah, so

first, Schmidt futures is the social benefit arm of Wendy and Eric Schmidt. It's their arm of promoting research, philanthropy intrapreneurship impact initiatives, the entrepreneurial residence program, they're based in New York, and they started around 2017 18. And in 2019, towards 2020, they came up with this intrapreneurial residence program, which targeted non traditional entrepreneurs, with ideas that have social impact aspects into them. And then that can build a better world basically. So they chose me. And I'm very grateful for that. And they chose another six amazing intrapreneurs that I cannot be more grateful for them to be my peers and allies in this journey and programs. So it started July 2020. And it will run through this July. It's employment based. So it literally gives an intrapreneur two years of financial stability to incubate their ideas and progress them into building tech companies. They gave us amazing mentorship and coaching that I could not even dream of. And to me, as a young mother, mother to young children better say, it really allowed me to become an intrapreneur. So I had the idea of Institute again, since my days in Tel Aviv, I started working on Institute After Graduation here from NYU, and in a small urban design firm in Brooklyn, kind of started initiating it with my back then boss, Alex Washburn, who was before Schmidt futures, the first believer in me and in Institute, so I must also mention him here. And I will always be grateful for his support early support back then. And when I left for my maternity leave with my third child, beginning of 2020, Alex and I already had this Redhook pilot and we knew that I wanted to spin out and build this company. But I looked for basically where where could I incubate this. First from the Yes, financial security and stability aspect, but also from the mentoring and coaching aspect, I didn't look back then for investment at all. I wanted first to become the CEO that my company deserves to have. And because I was the first time I am a first time entrepreneur, and founder, I wanted to make sure that I get the support and the resources that I need to really make it responsibly and I cannot be more happy happier than from choosing the Schmidt futures and they choosing me. And to your question, what was the experience so again, amazing mentorship, amazing coaching, amazing resources, amazing community of the Schmidt futures, just team that are not directly related to me or my venture, but just everyone there are so talented, brilliant and open to help and support with anything really. And we IRS have this special position there that we are kind of in mid futures but our job is to work on our ventures right? But still, I feel very lucky in going through this program. And I also must say that I strongly feel motivated to see more and more of these types of programs that truly allow diverse intrapreneurs to become intrapreneurs. So it's not just young mothers or single moms or young parents, it's also people from less strong financial backgrounds that cannot take two years to think about becoming an intrapreneurs. And let's see if this idea for a startup will work. And not everyone can allow that. I, of course, with three young kids wouldn't do it, even if I could take a loan that wouldn't be responsible. And I cannot say enough how this program was life changing to me,

would have been for you the biggest takeaways that you've learned so far,

I guess, overall in life, just don't take yourself too seriously, if I need to just say one thing, and also that there's always a way like, I guess intrapreneurship, most of the experience is doors shutting up on our own you, like most doors are closed. And even most windows are closed, and everything seemed impossible, at first, but you just need to keep on going and find the cracks through which you can progress. So I think like, yes, treating all of this as a journey and know that there is a way and just keep pushing forward, of course, in a smart way, and not just going against the wall, but keep looking for the first adopters, the people who have the motivation and listen to people. So this is one second, just put a smile on your face and treat all of this with as much as humor as possible. Because I mean, we're here to, to learn to try and to just become better, everyday. Yeah.

From the conception, right, you started this concept back in Tel Aviv, you carried it with you through your time at NYU, in the first job you had afterward, you had an opportunity to begin to incubate the concept with the support of your then boss. And I've gone through almost two years of this program at Schmidt futures, how has the concept evolved? How have have you incorporated the learnings that you're getting into the company yet? How has it changed as a result?

So I think the values and motivation and kind of big mission stayed the same and even got more and more strong. But what was evolved, of course, is just the business. If at first it was, oh, we layer the world with the future of cities and like who will pay for it right? And why and who cares? So I think, understanding the very weeds of motivations of the different stakeholders, like why would residents be part of it? Who will not want this to happen? Why will developers pay for it? While we see these adopted? What differences can we find in different geographies, but what similarities we can find everywhere in the world, I think like getting more and more into towards making this a business. That's the big learning. Second, just to understand more and more of the process, I came to this idea, as a former flight simulator, trainer, and architect walking down the streets of Tel Aviv and speaking with buildings. And now I mean, we are speaking with, like the most impactful policymakers and the biggest developers and the most impactful, I guess, community leaders to truly democratize and transform cities. And this city, which is much bigger than therapy, and I think it just became clearer and clear are the stakeholders, the players, and who plays why

you noted that this is your first time as a founder and CEO, and you want to become the CEO of the company deserved. What what does that mean to you?

I mean, you know, life is long and complicated. And who knows, if inCitu will be a success, where I will be like, who knows? Right? I really envision the future now, more than ever. It's obvious to me kind of that we will be able to walk down the street and turn on a layer of the future everywhere in the world. Like you can get Google Streetview right. To me, seeing this vision happening is much more important than what exit strategy it has or how big it will be. How much will it be sold for? 2x? I don't know. I mean, of course, I wanted to be also successful and financially successful and I want to succeed and I think that the company will succeed only if it will be fun. financially uplifting for developers as well, because that's the only way to move anything in a city. But I think that the mission is bigger than the company or of course, the knee as the CEO. And that's what I mean by like being the CEO that this company deserves to have, like the vision of making cities better for everyone through technology, and through immersive experiences, is much bigger than me. And I feel today that I'm still the only person who can do it, and who cares enough to build it and to dedicate their lives to it. But one day, I will do well, if this will run without me someday. And that's where I want to bring the company to

the mark of a great leader. Thank you, yeah, to step away, and it continues on,

I guess, also, as a mother, like, that's what we do, right? You grow your babies, either it's your babies, or your brain babies, until they're when they don't need you, really, for you

what has been kind of the most unexpected aspect of being the CEO and being the leader, and how has that kind of evolved over the last couple of years for you,

it took me some time to even admit that I am a CEO. You know, because it started as Yeah, we were working on this initiative. Now I'm an intrapreneur in residence, and like, it took some time to say, Okay, I'm the CEO of this. And for some time, I was the CEO, and the only person in the company. So that's also kind of weird situation. So I on boarded my amazing founding team members earlier this year. And we're now the past few months, for the first time, working officially as like a company with processes and just a team, which is amazing, different stage as a leader. And I think what evolves is, I'm a very good self manager. And I think I'm a natural leader and like, try to be a leader, even to my kids like more than an educator. That's how I see my role in life. And just in general, like when you work with people, I want to kind of be kind of good influence and guidance to help people become the best version of themselves. But now I get to do it with my team members, which is amazing. And again, I think that, to me, the CEO role is more being kind of the compass of the company, like whatever we do, from the workflows, the internal workflows to the data that we collect, to the product, to the design, to the messaging to the social media posts, to the business, and the pricing model and their financial projections, everything must be always 100% aligned with our mission and violet values. And that's my role to make sure that everything is always 100% aligned with our direction. And of course, as a CEO, and especially in that early stage, you also do everything else. But I think that that that's the best part of the of the world

have to ask, what does it mean it to talk to a building?

I need to refer to my final project in architecture studies. I went back then. So my final project was understanding and kind of peeling the layers of the urban development of Tel Aviv, of course, and I think, to some extent, this final project is there even earlier stage of Institute, but in my first days of trying to understand what am I trying to work on, I literally walked and walked and walked and bikes in Tel Aviv, and kind of in photograph, some buildings that I saw. And then I illustrated on them, and literally made like building comics theories of buildings that spoke and told the history of Telugu. So that's to me like speaking with buildings kind of reading and letting them speak to you. I think. And, I mean, I'm an architect in my heart, I love to say that I'm a graphic designer. I'm a granddaughter of a graphic designer, my grandfather was a graphic designer in the 60s and 70s. So before there were Photoshop and stuff like that, like a real graphic designer, I think with my hands and fingers through illustrating, and I have a notebook and a pen. That's how I work. And that's the only way I can brainstorm and even Institute's started with me, drawing and illustrating what it will be like. So I guess I'm a visualizing person. And that's to me kind of speaking with buildings, just letting them tell you about what happened to them and what what values and forces made them what they are.

And through that, you can help understand what they could be. Exactly. Yes, yeah. Let's wrap with a few in lightning round questions. What commonly held belief about AR VR spatial computing? Do you disagree with

force, the metaphors don't want to bomb anyone that is like a great advocate of metaphors. But I literally don't buy this bullshit, I'm sorry, if I can use this language of a parallel world that will save us all and will connect us I think it's dangerous to let people be more and more isolated, and more and more immersed in a way that is not engaging the real world, I think that we must really fight for applying this very powerful technologies to improve this world, I cannot say more clear way, like, it is powerful. And we need to be very responsible. And we have amazing opportunities in how powerful it is right with medicine and doctors that are using augmented reality or virtual reality to better prepare or with flight simulators. And you know, less losses of lives in different aspects, understanding the future, even, you know, city development through AR VR. I disagree with the thought that giving people better ability to isolate themselves from each other is good, like, to me get people outside, give them AR glasses for them to just layer the world with much more data and color the world with AR Right. Like, don't give them more motivation to stay at home. I mean, we all stayed home too much in the past few years. So let's get outside. And I think we're talking one day after the mask mandate in public schools in New York City ended, which I cannot celebrate more. So advocate for people to just go outside,

enhance and improve the world that we live in. Yep. Besides the one you're building, what tool or service do you wish existed in the AR market?

It is kind of under the umbrella of what I'm building, but making buildings fake, like let cities speak for themselves, or just whatever data that we have about our cities are real, not just the built environment, but from StreetEasy Zillow, to Instagram posts of people on top of buildings. And just like I don't know, your personal memories, on buildings, if you want to share them, or maybe just for yourselves, for yourself, I think we are our memories is so connected to where things happen, and to the built environment, that we need to interact with it much more easily. And to me really is, as you phrase it beautifully. I think it's enhancing the world. Like we can do it today with AR. So I don't know, I guess maybe this was exist or being developed these days? I guess they are. But just like layering the world with more colors, more data, more opinions, more opportunities.

What book have you read recently that you found to be deeply insightful or profound?

Oh, so it's near me, I'm reading it right now. It's very connected to everything we just discussed is welcome to your world. How the built environment shapes our lives. I really read it these days. It's a lot about this cognitive perception of the built environment and how it impacts our psychology, health values society overall. And how bad design is no less than the interest really, to all of us. So I really enjoy reading it. And yeah, I recommend,

that's great. When you sit down and have coffee with your 25 year old self, what advice would you share with 25 year old Dana?

I love that question. I guess to end with compassion and kind of forgiving kind of sense. I would tell her to do exactly what she did just be less judgmental to herself about it. And I guess that comes with with the years to just being more forgiving. And again, not taking yourself too seriously. Yeah, that's the that's the only advice.

Be more forgiving of yourself. Yeah, yeah. Any closing thoughts you'd like to share?

Happy International Women's Day to all we need any other thing? We haven't talked much about being a mother and intrapreneur. I recommend that strongly from both sides. I think it's a win win situation as a workaholic, type of person having like, just the fact that I must leave my work for several hours a day and concentrate in other very present and demanding creatures is super healthy and And, as makes me more productive, and gives me kind of the, the ability to step away from stuff for a bit, and I think even like, back to home from the other side, the fact that we as a family moved to New York after me, and that my amazing partner on like, did this with me. And this is our family story is very empowering. I cannot be more grateful for them for my family, my husband who chose to follow me and my kids who haven't chose but we chose for them, but they support me. So I think to end, I would just say that I'm very lucky to have my husband, my three kids and my dog, who very, very through this journey of intrapreneurship. With me,

so amazing. Where can people go to learn more about you and your work there at institchu,

LinkedIn, of course, mostly Institute dot x, y Zed. So that's our website, where we have pretty cool medium posts that will also tell a bit about my journey and kind of the more holistic view of the mother entrepreneur type of life. So medium, I'm not that strong at Twitter, I know that I need to get get better there. But soon we'll be on Snapchat and Instagram, Instagram. We were there already. And hopefully, we'll start our campaign soon. So we'll just see it in the streets as you will walk down the streets of New York and other cities in punch of QR codes, encouraging you to scan and look around at your future.

Amazing. And thank you so much for this conversation.

Thank you so much, Jason. Thank you, everyone.

Before you go, I'm going to tell you about the next episode. In it. I speak with Andrew Hart. Andrew is the co founder and CEO of Dent Reality, a company building the digital layer for the physical world. Andrew and his team have solved key technology problems across indoor mapping and accurate indoor location at scale. And they've created a user interface centered around people, not AR gimmicks. Andrew is a CEO by day and a pioneering developer by night. I think you'll really enjoy the conversation. Please follow or subscribe to the podcast and don't miss this or other great episodes. Until next time