Interview with Steve Statler
1. Steve, can you tell us more about your time at Wiliot and your experience there?
Steve Statler: When I started at Wiliot, I was the first employee of the Israeli company in the USA. In total, I spent more than seven years at Wiliot and experienced the entire development of the company at first hand.
At the beginning, I led product management, sales, business development, marketing and customer success and I had the privilege of experiencing the very first phase of the company - from the initial ideas, to fundraising and building a customer base for pilot projects. The company was still young and a pioneer in many ways, which made it very exciting to be a part of this growth process.
Wiliot worked with dozens of fortune 500 companies as well as hundreds of companies buying its starter kits to experiment with ambient IoT for the first time. Amongst other things my team supported the projects for two of the largest retail groups in the world. Eventually my role evolved to lead Wiliot marketing, and in this area we were able to achieve numerous successes for the company.
I am particularly proud of the fact that we have been at the forefront of Gartner's "hype technology" several times and that the Wall Street Journal has repeatedly mentioned the company in its reports.
In summary, my time at Wiliot was an extremely exciting and formative experience in which I was able to experience both the challenges and the successes of a growing company in a dynamic industry at first hand.
2. That sounds appreciative and positive! What experiences were particularly formative?
Steve Statler: Throughout my time at Wiliot, I've had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of people about ambient IoT technology. What particularly fascinated me was not only the application of IoT in areas such as warehousing and logistics, but also the possibility of using it in completely different industries. I found it particularly exciting to see how ambient IoT can be brought directly to the end user in areas from the home, to stores, restaurants, museums or in hospital management in order to bring about real change through the use of AI.
And this is exactly where the Ambient IoT Alliance comes in. This alliance not only focuses on retail, logistics or warehousing, but aims to reach all sectors of the economy that are suitable for the integration of cloud computing and AI. It is precisely this versatility and the potential to use AI across all sectors that fascinates me the most.
3. What significance does AI have for your future visions?
Steve Statler: The sensor technologies we use today are already very mature, but AI is still in its infancy. In my opinion, the development of AI depends heavily on it gaining access to data beyond the limits it has already reached.
AI leaders have struggled to access more data to grow the capabilities of the Large Language Models they are training. We have seen law suits about this, yet we are surrounded by trillions of things like food, medicine, and clothing, that are vital to our lives, have a rich data history.
We need AI in order to unlock benefits such as waste reduction, sustainability, efficacy, and new user experiences that will delight people. At the center of this is the digital product passport, which will generate a huge amount of data that needs to be processed. These digital product passports can establish authenticity and document what’s really in the products, where they have come from and how they have been handled.
However, given its scale, making sense of this information is only possible with intelligent AI applications. There’s too much data for people to understand and act on it alone. Only then can this data be correctly analyzed, evaluated and acted on.
This is exactly where I wanted to start - to close the gap between places, things, AI and people.
That's why I decided to set up my own company, and continue to be spokesperson for the Ambient IoT Alliance even after leaving Wiliot, one of the alliance’s founding members. Both steps symbolize the beginning of a new era in the development of AI, in which we can unlock the untapped potential of data through intelligent AI solutions.
