Ian Foster Podcast Transcript
Ian Foster joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Ian Foster. Ian Foster is an inventor, therapist, and entrepreneur renowned for creating Center Cam, the world’s first middle screen webcam. His journey began while completing his master’s internship in clinical social work at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
When the COVID 19 pandemic mandated a shift to remote counseling, Ian noticed the disconnect caused by traditional webcams during video calls. This insight led him to develop Center Cam to enhance virtual communication by enabling true eye contact.
Well, good afternoon, Ian. Welcome to the show!
Ian Foster: Thank you. Appreciate it, Brian.
Brian Thomas: You bet I appreciate you making the time. I know we traverse the globe doing this podcast, but it’s always good to know we can have some reliable Internet. Sometimes I don’t get that across the globe, but I do appreciate it and
Ian Foster: We’ve got a sunny day here in Utah and you’re in a tornado. So, I should be thanking you! You’re making a much bigger sacrifice being on this instead of further down in the bunker.
Brian Thomas: Yeah, well, I had an opportunity to live in California and earthquakes. I’d rather and I was in the high rise for aftershocks. It’s not rather be in tornado alley versus the California – it’s too crazy. But you know. Let’s jump right into your first question here. Could you share the moment you realized the need for Center Cam during your internship and how your background in clinical social work influences development?
Ian Foster: Yeah, so I was, as you said, I was finishing up an internship as a master’s degree candidate in social work, and I was working with youth in a residential treatment center, and I was a substance use counselor.
And so, right around March, we can all rewind the clock without going into some dark days. You know, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the air and, you know, in March, everything started to shut down. We saw the news reports coming out of Europe and, you know, we knew it was headed our way. Our school told us that we can’t, we were liability going into the internships because we weren’t technically employees.
And so, everybody, hospitals, RTCs. Even prisons, any, any sort of institution that housed people getting treatment, they, they hunkered down and they didn’t allow, you know, extra people. So, we were some of those extra people. And so, all of a sudden, you know, the rapport that I’d built with those kids it, like, we were starting to do the work.
It takes a little while in therapeutic relationship to actually trust each other enough to be able to say hard things in a safe. Way, you know, to challenge people and some of the paradigms that need, you know, to grow. And so we were actually starting to do the work and that’s when we were told we couldn’t meet with our kids anymore.
And so, I went home, and I just thought to myself, well, we, we started so immediately I pivoted and we developed a remote opportunity to, like, remote video conferencing. The school wasn’t set up for it. We developed it really quick for the other interns and really quickly. We saw this. Was terrible, you know, we were all looking all over the place and the kids were looking like this with a cell phone that I donated to the school.
And, you know, no 1 knew where to look. And I had been on a lot of video conferences before, but I hadn’t really cared because I hadn’t tried to conduct therapy via video conference before. And then all of a sudden that was like the. This is awful. And if this is the way the whole world is going right now, there’s got to be a better way.
So, I literally Googled middle screen webcam, but didn’t find anything webcam in the middle screen. Didn’t find anything center screen webcam center cam. You get the idea. I’m a decent researcher. I had all the derivatives of webcam in the middle screen. Couldn’t find anything. It didn’t exist. So, I mean, that night I was renting a room with my friend in his basement because I was in between Alaska and Utah, just finishing up school.
And that night I went down the rabbit hole, found a, the smallest USB enabled camera I could find, and I had it shipped to me and got there about 2 weeks later. It was all wrong, but it was in the right direction. And I just kept on chasing what my vision was over the course of 2020 and in January 2021 is when we launched Center Cam. The first middle screen webcam.
Brian Thomas: I love this story really do. And again, entrepreneurs have, I think, the best story sometimes. But you found a need and a problem, and you went to solve that problem. And it was so important, especially during a time of the pandemic, which had everybody shut down. In fact, some people are shut down still to this day permanently, unfortunately, but.
But you found a solution and that’s what’s really inspiring for us here on the in the audience. So, appreciate that. And Ian, maybe you can describe the design philosophy behind center cam and what were. The key features you insisted on including and why they were important to you.
Ian Foster: Yeah, I wanted it to be, it wasn’t just for me.
I mean, I use it all the time now and it’s great for me. And so, you know, check that box. I accomplished a goal for me, but when in the design for, you know, a mass market product, we were trying to make it applicable to as many people as possible. So, we wanted to be able to move up downside to side. Have my new adjustment capability and fit as many screens as possible from laptops to huge workstations.
I’m on a big workstation. I think it’s a 40-inch monitor. But we also wanted it to apply to laptops as well, because anytime you’re in. An important meeting, you want to be able to present yourself well, and it’s not just about eye contact. It’s about presenting yourself. Well, and that has a lot of different nuances to it.
We wanted the clip to move easily. We want it to be, you know. We wanted it to transmit it in the way a lot of people are chasing 4k in the webcam space, but nobody’s transmitting. Nobody’s doing video conferences in 4k. Sorry. I shouldn’t say nobody. 99 percent of people are not video conferencing in 4k.
And so that’s what we were chasing, you know, 2-megapixel, 1080P camera that as many people could use as possible. And we wanted it to kind of look cool, so oh, of course. Yeah, no, like heat-sink fins. And we’ve gotten a bunch of design and utility patents along the way, and that’s been a lot of fun going down that rabbit hole.
I’ve learned a lot of things I never knew that I was going to know, so here we are.
Brian Thomas: No, that’s awesome. And you had some pretty audacious goals to chase. Obviously moving to that higher quality certainly a big, big deal. And these days, especially when. Depending on where folks are located and their internet connection can sometimes be challenging.
So, appreciate that. And Ian transitioning from a therapist to a CEO must have been challenging. What have been the most unexpected aspects of running a tech startup and how have you adapted?
Ian Foster: Yeah, well, I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I mean, my first business was a lawn mowing business. I took over my brother’s 1 contract for our neighbor’s lawn when I was like 12, and then all of a sudden, I made 15 bucks as a 12-year-old.
And that was big money back then because I’m a little bit older than that. Now. Anyway, I’ve done a lot of different entrepreneurial activities. I’ve done gold diving. I’ve run a. I’m a licensed contractor still I’ve done a lot of different things. The interesting thing with Center Cam was that we’re still managing growth.
And that was the hardest part. There were a lot of skills that I had. I’d done marketing and I’d done videography and I have all these little weird Slumdog millionaire kinds of random things that I’ve done that just. Perfectly came together for Center Cam and I feel really blessed and lucky for that.
But when it comes to, like, what we’re trying to do, we, we scale, we immediately hit, which we can thank the Kickstarter community and the Indiegogo community for that. And we all of a sudden had to manage growth and then we got hit with a chip set shortage and we couldn’t even buy the chip that we used.
To make the center cam at any price and so we just had delays that we didn’t know when would end. Those are emotional muscles. I never thought I would have to need, you know, I had to message thousands of people saying, hey, we’re not sure how this is going to get figured out, but we’re doing our best and we haven’t spent your money.
You’re welcome to get a refund, but if you want to. Be on board for an exciting ride, please stay on board. And it was that’s that stuff was the craziest part of being the CEO because I went from just having a pure crowd fund and a pure idea of something I thought could help people to having to transition, you know, to learning about, you know, the guts of logistics in the tech industry, specifically, and.
In scaling marketing and knowing who to trust. One of the biggest take homes was that there were really there was a few big agencies that we hired that didn’t do a good job for us. And that was the hardest thing to let go of people that supposedly knew a lot more than me, because that’s their expertise.
And that was one of the hardest things to CEO for sure, but. I got an MBA before I got an MSW and so I do have a business background and that was 1 of the things. I mean, the numbers are black or red. That’s the simple version. And. You know, when the ROAS isn’t there and you don’t have a bunch of venture capital backing you to kind of spend monopoly money, like every dollar counts. And so, we had to make some tough decisions.
Brian Thomas: Yeah, and I can tell you, it’s, it’s not an easy go as an entrepreneur but luckily you had some exposure as a, as a child, right? Learning as a team, mowing lawns and those sorts of things kind of build that, that, I guess that muscle that you were going to need later in life, but obviously you had to do a much more at a larger scale, much more at risk for sure.
So, appreciate that story. And then, Ian, finally, what has been the most rewarding part of this journey for you personally, and what advice would you give to aspiring inventors who want to make a difference?
Ian Foster: The amount of people that were helping, you know, I, I always wanted to gain the skill set of a therapist, which means a tremendous amount of.
I don’t know weaponized report, you know, like, the ability to really make rapport a real tool, not just some passive thing that you do, because you can’t think of something else to do, you know, and the, but that being said, I’m 1 person and average therapist. They do about 2025 client sessions a week. And, you know, you multiply that by a year and, you know, that’s a lot of good.
That’s a tremendous amount of good that can happen, but you multiply that by the amount of cameras that we’ve shipped. And a lot of those are being used by clinical therapists in session. You figure at least 15 to 20 percent of our cameras are being used by clinical therapists in remote sessions.
And that’s a big number now, and that’s huge and I’m, I’m overwhelmed and super grateful and I get emotional when I think, think about it, just because, like, I know that problem that I had at the very beginning, which was the vision that I was chasing was the thing that’s helped a lot of other people as far as what I can offer other folks is that I’ve had 1000 inventions and I’ve chased hundreds of them and, you know, I’ve actually built them.
You know, tens of them and don’t stop, you know, there’s a lot of faith that went into it. And faith doesn’t mean this, like, passive belief. It means that you have this vision of what you want to accomplish and then you put all the work in and until that vision is a reality. And that takes persistence. And don’t stop, you know, and you’re going to get all sorts of advice from people.
It’s, you know, well intentioned. Your friends are probably going to believe in you and its garbage advice because it’s not real. And the trolls are not going to believe in you. And that’s also garbage advice because it also isn’t real. And but if you have a vision for a better world, and something that can help it, you know, chase that, and there’s going to be a ton of energy into it.
And even if there isn’t, you’re going to end up with a great story and a reason why. And that’s worth pursuing, I think, and that’s basically how I justify a lot of the years of my life. Anyway, all the, all the misadventures and some of the misfires, you know,
Brian Thomas: I appreciate that. I really do. And at the end of the day, I know you, you mentioned that word persistence, which you had, and you had the grit.
But you again had that purpose of helping others and a lot of times that’s what it is in a business as an entrepreneur is helping others. You bring in a solution to eliminate their pain, which I totally respect, and I just love the story. And Ian, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Ian Foster: Thanks so much. Brian. I appreciate it. Thanks for your time.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Ian Foster Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
