Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen on Delivering Moonshots into Moon Landings
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LDV Capital invests in people building businesses powered by visual technologies. We are the only venture capital firm with this thesis.
On March 23 at our 8th Annual LDV Vision Summit, Evan Nisselson, General Partner at LDV, will speak with Dr. Jepsen about her lessons on “How to Make Moonshots into Moon Landings & Other Stories in Deep Tech Entrepreneurship.”
Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen is the founder and CEO of OpenWater, a startup working on novel imaging systems that leverage lasers as well as optoelectronic & holographic systems to see deep into the body and brain with the detail of a high-resolution 3D camera. In other words, the OpenWater team is building a new generation of portable, real-time neural imaging systems.
With a Ph.D. in Optical Physics, Dr. Jepsen has previously served as an engineering executive at Facebook, Oculus, Google[x], and Intel as well as a founder of 4 startups including One Laptop per Child where she was CTO, chief architect, and delivered to mass production the $100 laptop.
Her startup CEO experience includes the world’s only fabless display screen company which was based in Taipei. She has been a professor at MIT and is an inventor on over 100 published or issued patents in the last 5 years alone.
In the lead-up to the Summit, Evan had the privilege of asking Dr. Jepsen a few questions.
Evan: Throughout your amazing career, you have taken on some momentous projects that almost no one thought could succeed, all the way from ideation to people’s doorsteps (e.g. Oculus, $100 computer). If you had to point to one of the skills that has been central to your success across all of these projects, what would it be?
Mary Lou: The actual thrill of trying to do the impossible and confidence in my skills and abilities.
Evan: What intrigues you the most about the optics & imaging field?
Mary Lou: It’s visual and to me as a kid seemingly magical and yet totally not – governed by physics, and perception of the human visual system.
Evan: Why do you believe it is important for us to be able to see into our bodies?
Mary Lou: To find and cure diseases more effectively for everyone on the planet – rich and poor. And to improve ourselves and our ability to communicate with each other.
Evan: Outside of your work with OpenWater, what are the two most cutting edge applications of visual tech that you feel will have a significant impact on the world in 10 years?
Mary Lou: There is the obvious - well articulated in Dave Eggers wonderful novel called “The Circle” now nearly a decade old. Ubiquitous cameras, many benefits for safety but loss of privacy to the extreme. To pick two areas of impact: childcare and eldercare.
Evan: What are you most interested in learning more about at our 8th Annual LDV Vision Summit?
Mary Lou: That which surprises me.
Back in 2017, we at LDV Capital released our inaugural Insights report titled, “45 Billion Cameras by 2022 Fuel Business Opportunities” – the first publicly shared, in-depth analysis that estimates how many cameras will be in the world in 2022.
“Over the next five years, there will be a proliferation of cameras integrated into products across industries and markets. A paradigm shift will take place in the meaning and use of a camera.
Taking into account the industries that will embed cameras into products, those that will add additional cameras to products, and new vision-enabled products that will arise, the number of cameras will grow at least 220% by 2022.
This growth in cameras delivers tremendous insight into business opportunities in the capture, analysis and interpretation of visual data. Cameras are no longer just for memories. They are becoming fundamental to improving business and society.”
