When Ross Finman and his wife set out to try to find baby formula during a critical shortage of the product in 2022, they ended up driving about 100 miles around the Seattle area on a Saturday looking for stocked shelves.
Fifty miles into that drive, Finman had the idea for his next startup.
“The baby formula shortage of 2022 was kind of how I got into what Augmodo does,” Finman said. “Want to talk about a No. 1 consumer pain point? Feeding your kid is very high up there.”
Augmodo is a year-old Seattle startup that’s using computer vision, augmented reality, AI, spatial computing, 3D mapping, data analysis and more buzzy tech to solve retail’s problems around inventory, keeping products in stock, and eliminating substitutions in e-commerce grocery orders.
Finman, who grew up on a llama farm in Northern Idaho, has had a successful career in robotics and augmented reality, and as an entrepreneur. He completed his undergrad studies at Carnegie Melon University, and his masters and PhD work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He spun his first company, Escher Reality, out of MIT and was part of Y Combinator’s 2017 class. In 2018, Escher was acquired by Niantic Labs, makers of the location-based game “Pokémon Go.” Finman spent 4 1/2 years at Niantic as the general manager of the company’s headset division.
“We were the founding AR acquisition at Niantic,” Finman said. “We built up the team from scratch to well over 100 people. I was working directly with the CEO on augmented reality strategy, future hardware mapping, etc.”
Comparing the mapping he did at Niantic, Finman said it was like building Google Earth down to the centimeter. Now he’s building maps inside the retail world.
“It’s hard to monetize sidewalks and playgrounds, but you can monetize where people spend money in the real world,” he said.
Augmodo’s software as a service solution starts with a relatively cheap hardware idea.
The company is clipping inexpensive, repurposed dash cameras onto grocery store associates in order to passively collect data from employees who are already wandering store aisles.
“Think about the QFC employee who may be picking a dozen products for an online order, but they’re seeing thousands,” Finman said, adding that Augmodo can collect more data about empty shelves and product availability more cheaply and efficiently than the startup’s biggest competitors, which are expensive robot scanners.
By tracking every product, Augmodo creates a 3D “Realogram” for each store, which is a digital twin or map of that store, and everything in it.
“Keeping track of your own shopping list — that’s hard,” Finman said. “Keeping track of 50,000 products, inventory and the mistakes people make is exceptionally hard.”
The tech can also be used to monitor planograms, a term used to describe how retailers and brands merchandise products on store shelves to maximize sales. Coca-Cola, for instance, might have an army of employees across the country, tasked with visiting stores to assess planograms. Finman pictures replacing that expense with an augmented workforce of retail associates.
Down the road, the tech might also show up in a shopper’s wearable device, projecting AR-enhanced tips on where to find products in a store or deals that brands are running.
With a plan to have all of these retail workers walking around wearing cameras, Finman is quick to address any privacy concerns and what gets captured.
“People are noise for us. We don’t want to track any customers,” he said. “We’re just trying to get the shelf data, keep track of the inventory, give insights in terms of what is where.”
Augmodo currently employs six people, including Finman, who is the startup’s CEO. Employees have joined from such previous ventures as Standard AI, Microsoft HoloLens, Apple and Tesla.
The tech is being used by one small store in New York, and Augmodo is launching upcoming pilots with a 2,000-store chain, which Finman couldn’t name yet, and another 500-store chain.
“We’re targeting grocery to begin with because they have the highest throughput and largest workforce, so they have the biggest real-world data problems,” Finman said. “We can work with any retailers, but you may only order a sweater from Macy’s twice a year. You order groceries twice a week.”
Competitors in the space include Seattle-based Observa. The startup uses real-time, crowd-sourced retail audits that show brands and retailers how products are being displayed in physical stores and correlates that with sales. Shelf Engine, another Seattle startup, uses machine learning to streamline the ordering process for grocers.
Augmodo is self funded to date, but Finman is getting ready to kick off fundraising for a new round.
