what problem common to rural areas of the developing world has the readyset attempted to solve?

Over 1 billion people in the world need spectacles, merely can't afford them or don't have access to them. That's why StartupYard investor and mentor Philip Staehelin launched a Czech startup – DOT Glasses – to try to solve this massive problem 3 years ago.

Today he believes they finally have the solution, and are nearly to launch big-scale product of the world'due south first, one-size-fits-all eyeglass frames (which were designed by a joint venture of Mercedes-Benz and AKKA Technologies), along with a transformative lens concept.

Philip is the former CEO of CCS, the one-time Managing Partner of Roland Berger, and an alumnus of many other international companies like Accenture, T-Mobile and A.T. Kearney.

Earlier this year, DOT Glasses received a "matching funds grant" from CzechAid (upwardly to CZK 5m over iii years), and they've recently won a identify in the EU-funded Startup Europe'south Soft Landing plan to Bharat (called the "Ecosystem Discovery Mission"). They were one of the 24 European representatives selected for the program.

I sat down with Philip this week to talk about the launch of DOT Glasses, along with the crowdfunding campaign to support the visitor on hithit (you can bank check the link to contribute). Here'southward what he had to say:

Lloyd: Why spectacles?

Philip: There are a few parts to the story, of course. If you lot're asking specifically why I decided to focus on providing spectacles to people in developing regions, it'southward merely one of those weird coincidences that of a sudden made me realize that a 700-year-old industry could nonetheless be disrupted.

If you mean, why glasses and why provide them to developing regions, information technology'southward because I've long been focused on making an touch on across my firsthand "bubble", and I was at a stage in my career where I wanted to utilise my fourth dimension and resources to help those almost in need of things nosotros take for granted here in the developed world.

The idea specifically came to me while I was skiing, and information technology'due south funny because at first it seemed like a pretty outset world trouble to have. I'm mildly nearsighted now (although I used to have very bad eyesight, and had laser surgery fifteen years ago to correct my vision), and then I wearable glasses. I can do without them, merely I like the world in sharp focus.

Philip Staehelin, Founder of DOT Glasses

When I ski, I don't like to clothing my spectacles under my ski goggles, so I ordinarily go without – which isn't always good especially when skiing moguls. On the ski lift, I was daydreaming about ownership some "off-the-shelf" lenses to pop into some specially-designed ski goggles, providing me improved (if not perfect) vision to make my skiing more comfortable. I didn't want to spend money on prescription ski goggles – it wasn't worth it, and it was a hassle – but I started thinking about what could be "good plenty" vision and how I could stock some express range of lenses on the shelf next to ski goggles, so people could just select what lens helped them enough.

The next ride upwards on the ski lift brought me a eureka moment. "Good plenty" vision was all about smartly limiting the option of lenses. It'southward kind of similar the lxxx/20 rule that'southward prevalent in so many facets of life and business. 20% of the effort for 80% of the proceeds. 20% of the lenses to achieve 80% of the vision clarity. If it was truthful (and the implications came crashing down on me all at once)… it could transform an industry. Only non the ski manufacture with a few one thousand thousand customers at all-time.

Rather, it could disrupt the eyeglasses industry for people in need. Actually, "disrupt" is the wrong word in this example, considering more 1 billion people need glasses only have no access to them or can't afford them. Then there is not a current player to disrupt. It'south more than about tapping into a new, massive client segment that has been unaddressable because of the challenges of costs, logistics, lack of optometrists, etc.

When I got back home, I started researching the issue. You may retrieve, living in Europe, that nosotros are drowning in optometrists, because they are on every corner of every major city. Actually we accept something like 1 optometrist for every 3000 people, and near lx% of those optometrists are usually based in the capital cities.

On the reverse, in many underdeveloped regions, such as in parts of Africa, there are non enough optometrists to get around. In some cases, there are just a handful in an unabridged country with millions of people. In Ghana, there are nigh l optometrists for a population of nearly 20 meg, and the per capita income is less than a dollar a 24-hour interval. Getting glasses can have a calendar week's travel and several months' wages.

Which means that for a vast swath of the world's population – spectacles are either an unaffordable luxury, or they're simply not available. If you accept +/-ane diopter (also known every bit 20/40 vision), you can absolutely live a normal life. In the U.k. for instance, xx/40 is the required driving standard. But in one case you lot start getting past +/-three diopters (20/250), information technology starts to become hard to lead a normal life. I have first-hand experience, every bit I used to have -six diopters before my laser surgery, and as a child, I literally couldn't notice my family at the embankment if I didn't take my glasses.

That's then interesting. Basically there is no existing market place to help these people.

Exactly. Poor vision is the #i wellness issue in the earth, but almost no one talks almost it. It causes roughly $230 billion dollars of economic loss every single twelvemonth, just on an individual level, poor eyesight prevents people from learning in school, it prevents them from having a meaningful job (or any job), and it hurts families and communities. Poor vision literally traps people and families in poverty. But it'south been too challenging to treat poor vision in more remote parts of the world, even though the solution has been around for centuries.

So in the end I decided on a simple concept (I really call information technology "maximum simplification"): a set of glasses that are both modular, and inexpensive, which tin can reach developing regions adequately hands, and don't require a professional optometrist to exist dispensed to the cease user. All you need, to provide a pair of customized DOT Glasses is a very simple testing tool (that we adult), and the components of your individual gear up of glasses: the 6 pieces of the snap-together frames, and the correct force of lenses (which, past the style, are "left-correct agnostic" – a concept we as well adult, assuasive for the aforementioned lens shape to exist used as a correct or left lens, which reduces lens stock requirements past half). The terminate upshot: robust, good-looking, glasses that are available to a buyer for about $iii.

$3 is a lot to some people

Aye. If you live on $2 a twenty-four hour period, then $3, comparatively speaking, is pretty close to what a person in the adult world would pay for their own glasses from an optometrist. We have worked very difficult to make them equally affordable as possible, and $3 is the lowest we've been able to get it. For those wanting to correct a less astringent problem with their eyesight (due east.g. -ii diopters), this toll point may not be absolutely compelling, but for the more than severe cases, it's the best investment they volition ever brand. It will be completely life irresolute.

Why haven't charities really attacked this problem before?

They have – at that place accept been many projects targeting this trouble, only none has been able to address all the bug needed to scale properly. Those that train optometrists are doing a smashing thing, but the earth needs almost 100,000 optometrists to bring the per capita ratio even close to a 1st world ratio… and they even so wouldn't exist located in rural areas.

There are a lot of economic incentives against optometrists locating themselves in poorer areas. They go where people can pay more than, especially if they are in loftier need. That means y'all tin can railroad train thousands of new optometrists and still accept little impact in remote regions. They will go where the money is.

Others focus on delivering self-adjustable glasses with some adequately advanced technologies (two stand out: fluid-based lenses and Alvarez lenses). But in reality, these are over-engineered which keeps costs much also high. They deal with one shortage (optometrists), but they exacerbate another shortage (money). And they don't look like normal glasses – they're merely not stylish enough.

Those that attempt to solve the problem by providing regular glasses as cheaply every bit possible still run into problems such as: huge stock of frames and lenses needed to accost all of the combinations of faces (including pupil distance and ears altitude from optics) and eyesight requirements. This increases the cost of stock, and makes replenishing that stock much more than complicated and costly, only it also requires a trained optometrist (or at least an optician) to measure the eyesight to a fairly granular level. All of this adds complexity and costs, which makes information technology impossible to propagate into more than remote rural areas.

Also, I think ane of the large problems with the all-charity approach is that they often fail to accept the motivations of the people they are working with into account. If yous develop real economic incentives for people to distribute the spectacles as a product, for example, past supplying a few local people with the preparation and the equipment necessary to dispense them, then yous are finer creating a new market. That's the reason we developed our own super easy testing kit likewise, because at the terminate of the day, we want this to be a new viable small business organisation opportunity for people in these remote areas, where previously providing glasses was not economically feasible.

That is why the glasses are not complimentary to brainstorm with. If we relied on charitable donations, nosotros would also miss out on the opportunity to leverage the entrepreneurial energy of these local partners, who, let's be honest, are going to understand their own local markets and customers a lot better than we do.

This is really the cadre failure of many NGO projects: they don't really consider the long-term incentives of the participants and recipients of their help. Of course, not relying on donations too allows DOT Spectacles to scale much faster than other organizations, equally the concern model is sustainable and the revenues are reinvested into growing the footprint to help more people. The more than we can sell, the faster we'll abound. We just demand to "prime the pump" with donations and/or social impact investment in the early stages in order to build out our first networks.

Then you lot're non a charity.

No. We have charitable intentions (and we're a true social enterprise), simply I likewise believe that it's in a way disrespectful to people in economically challenged regions to assume that they are not motivated in the same manner that people are in developed regions, by the opportunity to pursue success and prosperity with hard piece of work. That's why we believe finish-users of our spectacles should be paying for them, and the profits from that activity should benefit the local economies every bit much as possible. Ultimately, that is the way to assistance these regions develop.

Likewise, in many cases, charitable activities tin can have a detrimental touch on in the surface area they're trying to assist. They may end up hurting developing economies, even though they accept the best intentions at heart. Think of nutrient charities that end upwardly displacing local farmers who tin't compete with complimentary stuff. That's a existent problem with charities, and 1 that is rather insidious.

Even sending volunteers to teach in slums tin have negative consequences, considering the local authorities starts to depend on the gratis handout (in this case, education) and doesn't develop a properly functioning, stable educational infrastructure of its own. Which means they don't care nigh creating their own teachers, and those few teachers that there are may actually have lower salaries because they're competing against "free".

With our work, we hope to create microbusinesses, with the help of microloans if necessary. We desire to have entrepreneurial people start upward their own middle care businesses. In the process, they create a better life for themselves and their families, but they're also selling a new charter on life to those who can't see well. And it's been proven, that at that place is a tremendous increase in productivity when someone gets their poor vision corrected, which ways boosted wealth creation for individuals, families and communities. It'south a truthful virtuous cycle.

You spent a career every bit an executive in big corporations, as a consultant, and finally as an investor (including in StartupYard). What would you advise someone similar yourself, who is thinking nigh a career shift toward charitable/entrepreneurial work?

It'south a great question. The route from the boardroom to developing DOT Spectacles for remote regions of the earth was a pretty long and winding ane. Merely the fact that information technology was long and winding is important, as I learned new things from every role I e'er had. Pocket-sized things and big things. I became more well-rounded, and I could see the world from more angles.

I'm a huge believer in cantankerous-pollination of ideas between industries, between companies, betwixt countries, etc. For example, I brought a lot of my mobile operator feel to my office as CEO of a big culling payments company, because both had a lot of B2B and B2C customers, both needed customer care, both needed direct sales, both were concerned about customer churn… and in some cases the mobile operator approach could be adapted to create a better solution for the payments company.

This isn't a unique feel obviously, but the corporate world is gear up up against this to some extent. They desire to hire people with feel from their own industry. But I went through a few different industries, as well as through consulting (which teaches y'all a lot about how to structure problems, organize projects, analyze information, and find the core essence of the assay), and I started using that latitude of experience to mentor startups.

Startups (especially with young founders) ofttimes know a lot nigh their applied science, their market dynamics and perchance a few other select bits of information – but they oftentimes lack the large picture. They also oft lack some key skill sets that they volition need, such every bit sales, finance, and strategy, not to mention, they have no thought how to talk to the corporate world (although I admit I'm hugely generalizing).

And so I assist them with that. But maybe even more than important than providing some insights into missing skills, is providing cross-pollination. It's all nigh identifying new opportunities (even new tangents) that aren't obvious. It's nearly synthesizing new value past bringing together entirely new elements. Which is what I did with DOT Spectacles.

Coming back to part of your question though, the respond is to strive to go a cross-pollinator. Constantly learn new things, challenge yourself, become out of your condolement zone as oftentimes as possible, go out of your corporate bubble, and get out into the globe and practise things. Mentor startups, work in a clemency, join a business gild – merely if you lot practise it, practice everything actively. Make an touch on. Don't be passive, because then information technology'south just a waste of fourth dimension. I like to say that "life is too brusk to do just one thing". I believe in side interests. I believe in planting lots of seeds and seeing what sprouts. And eventually one of those things can grow into something bigger and more beautiful than yous could have imagined.

But don't forget the lessons y'all learn in the corporate world about pursuing long-term economical interests, including your ain?

Yeah, that's correct. Social impact work is not necessarily clemency. We don't just give, we also wait for sustainable opportunities that tin can grow the overall economies nosotros are focusing on. That in the end is a benefit to us, and to those regions. In my view, there are many, many activities that are currently approached with a "charity" mindset, that might be better served past a social impact, entrepreneurial mindset likewise.

Hey, this isn't rocket science hither! We all know the saying: "give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a human being to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." Well, it's not just educational activity is it? Brand someone your business organization partner, no matter what it is they're doing, and brand it mutually beneficial, and that is going to create opportunities for you both.

How do you think corporate officers, like you were in the past, can better contribute to this kind of sustainable social affect?

Permit's say this: I think it comes downwards to really trying to understand, and develop a respect for the people you lot are trying to assistance. When I think well-nigh social bear on, I retrieve about non just looking at means of improving someone's life, but also improving my ain, and the lives of those around that person. That comes back to you, in the end. There is a part of social impact that should exist "selfish," in a way. I am doing this considering I want to live in a improve world, for me likewise as for yous.

I recollect it is a danger among those of united states of america who bask some material success, that we begin to imagine that we are giving and no longer taking anything. However in nigh charitable activities that just isn't truthful. Nosotros are taking a lot, in terms of what matters to united states of america: respect, reputation, the feeling of doing skilful works. That is something of value. Y'all should e'er be aware of what motivates yous to do what you do.

Again, nada wrong with feeling proficient for giving back. Simply I would encourage people to go further than that, and to think about how their actions actually tie back into their own lives. This is how we empathise with people in the existent world.

If I am helping someone in a remote hamlet in India to see ameliorate, then how is this affecting my ain life? I can tell y'all, information technology does affect my life. Leaving bated that each individual with the proper tools in life has a take chances to alter the earth, to exist the next Einstein, I am also helping to make certain that this person is being economically productive.

If people are more economically productive, it is more likely that they will exist prosperous, and then volition need less back up in other means. Eventually, developing regions become developed, and I tin can enjoy the benefits of that evolution in my ain life. That is a prosperous cycle, and if you don't actively look to run into it, I retrieve yous lose sight of why yous're doing what you practice. Yous may end up non really respecting the people you're trying to assist.

What accept y'all learned from this that you didn't already know? What has surprised you?

I'm an inventor at heart. I have lots of ideas. But I have learned something really new in the process of moving this project by "idea" stage, and into realization.

What I discovered is that the true "innovations" that finish upwardly happening are non but around the idea itself, just rather the things yous accept to invent in guild to get that idea to work. What I hateful is, the "solutions effectually the solution," are actually where a smashing deal of the creative work happens.

So I commencement out with the lightning strike near "good enough vision" which creates a transformative lens concept. Merely to realize the potential of the lens concept, I had to piece of work very, very hard to develop 1-size-fits-all modular spectacles (only my 3rd industrial designer cracked the nut – the first two didn't find a solution), because I realized that the combination of those 2 elements could be the magic bullet to solve a vexing trouble that no i else had managed to solve.

But later I had the spectacles, I realized I needed some tools to facilitate the streamlined process I was imagining, so I had to blueprint a vision tester and a pupil distance measuring tool. And then to parcel all that together into one "kit", and designing an end-to-end process around that kit in order to get the spectacles to those people that needed them… information technology was one problem after another that had to be addressed.

Each stride required an innovation, but the innovations built on each other. Would someone have designed my educatee distance measuring tool without my modular spectacles? No. But they were required for the entirely new ecosystem that I was building. And then building the entire ecosystem took much more time than I expected.

And so in the terminate, the work is more than artistic than the ideation.

Yep. Information technology is. That's something you tin't know until yous endeavour. I'm happy to accept found that out, because beingness really creative and solving real bug every solar day is how I like to live my life.

If you're interested in contributing to the DOT Glasses project, you lot can practice so today past clicking beneath and pledging to their crowdfunding entrada:

pottersuicklentrot.blogspot.com

Source: https://startupyard.com/sy-investor-launches-dot-glasses-the-3-glasses-that-could-help-the-world-see/

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