Apple's Smart Glasses Play 🕶

and The First One-Person Billion-Dollar Business

Author

Lori-Lee Elliott
April 20, 2025

But First…Cool, if Real

Omakase with a side of VR:

Icca, New York City

This is real. Michelin-starred Chef Kazushige Suzuk offers an omakase + VR experience at Icca in New York City. There’s no preview of what the VR experience looks like online, but the reservation page divulges that it’s an “8-course tasting menu while exploring immersive virtual environments, bespoke scents and cinematic soundscapes, blending tradition with innovation for a truly unique experience.” Sign me up.

Becoming Dauntless

Social media made the $1 million one-person company possible. Will AI make the $1 billion one-person company a reality?

This concept floated around the tech bro circles, and made it into the zeitgeist, probably thanks to Tim Cortinovis’ book Single-Handed Unicorn: How to Solo Build a Billion-Dollar Company. 

When you have AI, technology isn’t the barrier to entry; the barrier is effective problem-solving and communicating the solution. This Forbes article forecasts that “masterminds” (aka expensive memberships that get you “in the [virtual] room” with business peers) will become essential as solo-preneur companies rise with AI. Even if you don’t need a team, entrepreneurs still need to expand their thinking, and that’s hard to do alone in a home office.

I love having a team, co-conspirators, and people smarter than me in the room so this business model isn’t for me, but the first solo billionaire entrepreneur is out there.

Is it you?

Industry News

  • Tim Cook Reimagines the Vision Pro to Compete with Meta (9to5mac). Apple is playing catchup on the smartglasses front after the Vision Pro failed to get the traction VR-enthusiasts hoped for. The pivot: a turn to augmented reality smart glasses like the Meta Ray-Bans as a stopgap while Apple develops true augmented reality wearables.

  • A Cautionary Meta Tale of GenAI (LinkedIn). Meta released a generative AI tool for creators building in Horizon Worlds to mixed reviews. You can build a full gaming scene in a few hours instead of three months and with a solo creator instead of a team. Astrix One: The AI appears to pull pre-fab 3D assets from online libraries that the original creators may/may not have consented to. Astrix Two: GenAI like this is fantastic for getting to prototype, but to turn a scene into a fully fledged gam,e you still need human software engineers (for now).

  • Developing e-Taste Technology. But…Why? (The Debrief). Researchers at the University of Ohio and developing technology that will allow people to taste different flavors while in VR. A gel tab that rests on your lower teeth releases chemicals that reproduce sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. I’d rather do Chef Kazu’s Michelin Star omakase. Astronauts on long missions might benefit from this tech when they get tired of space food, which I assume gets bland, but on Earth we have bigger problems to solve.

  • Shell Using Digital Twins (InnovateEnergyNow). Shell brought an offshore oil rig platform online remotely from NOLA using a digital twin. Operators use HoloLens 2 headsets and Class 1 Div 1 iPads (why not a RealWear headset that is Class 1 Div 1 and combine two products into one? We may never know). Hopefully, whatever app they built for HoloLens wasn’t custom because the platform is sunsetting this year.

Saved on Socials

The posts, memes, and videos that caught my attention this week:

Recently Played >

What we listened to this week.

  • Audiobook On Democracy and Death Cults (Audible). As an anthropologist, I found this concept FASCINATING. If you found this interesting, look up Cargo Cults.

  • Federated Podcast (Spotify). An amazing example of building an “un-sexy” but necessary product via bootstrapping.

Overheard on Slack

Enter the chat. What our devs are talking about…

  • “Don’t fly Spirit”. Self-explanatory.

  • “You know someone saw that and then searched edible glue.” - When AI tells you to put glue on pizza to make the cheese stick.

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