Introduction to Guest

Peter Ma is Co-Founder at MixPose, a live streaming yoga platform that uses AI pose detection in real time. He’s part of Intel Software Innovator, Arm Innovator and Nvidia AI innovator. Peter has been a software developer for more than 12 years, and has been involved in five different startups, not to mention winning more than 100 hackathons. Some of his accomplishments include speaking about mobile apps at TEDGlobal 2010, Winning the 2015 AT&T Developer Summit grand prize, and winning the grand challenger award of the United Nations Development Programme COVID-19 challenge (to name a few). Peter has previously founded Clean Water AI and Doctor Hazel, a skin cancer AI detection system. Peter graduated from the NJ Institute of Technology with a degree in Computer Science.

Ever since Peter was young and playing with computers, he has considered himself an engineer. He went on to receive a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering degree, began working at a good company, and soon found himself entering in, and winning hackathons. Eventually, Peter quit his full-time job, mainly because he started to make more money at the hackathons. Through participating in hackathons, Peter earned short term contracts with different companies building prototypes, while building his network and community of people. Because of these opportunities, Peter found himself surrounded by cutting edge technology. For example, Peter began working and learning about AI before it was widely talked about. Because of Peter’s natural curiosity and interest in technology, he saw each challenge and work opportunity as a chance to learn and grow.

Coming Up with The Idea

Peter and his friend began bopping around ideas with each other on an AI company they would like to start. With Artificial Intelligence able to detect body parts, they thought it would be a great idea to start MixPose – that can detect human poses in real time.

Peter then submitted MixPose to an Android challenge (hosted by Google), and his app was selected as one of the ten apps who won the worldwide competition. In fact, Peter and his team were the only team selected from the United States. After winning the competition, Peter and his team began getting to work, with the vision to make MixPose a highly successful and usable app. By January 2020 Peter and his team had put in a lot of effort into the company, however, were skeptical if people would teach or take classes online. However, after COVID hit, all Yoga classes were forced to be online only. This was the moment when Peter realized they had a product that could really work.

Developing the Product

MixPose is getting rolled out in three phases. Phase One is getting the product ready, and ready to produce the highest quality content. MixPose does not use Zoom, but instead a broadcasting software system along with music encoding. This way you are encoding movie ads in real time. Phase One also involves the teacher onboarding. Second Phase is the subscription. Third Phase is the independent classes so the teacher can teach and then get paid. MixPose generates income from subscriptions.

The AI comes into play if the teacher has a large crowd of about 100 students. The teacher can then use Artificial Intelligence to see if anyone in the class is doing the pose(s) incorrectly. That student will show up on the screen as high priority so the instructor can give the individual more attention. The instructor also has access to crowd analytics.

Right now, MixPose is testing the product out with different teachers, with about six to nine students showing up for each class, all of which have the option to be on or off camera. MixPose has a privacy option so you can join a private class so only the teacher can see you. You can also join friend’s groups. MixPose is one of the first apps to broadcast high quality video content as well.

A MixPose class versus a Zoom class is very different. Peter is teaching the MixPose instructors how to use game streaming software, so they are up to date with the technology.

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Make sure to make a product demo and look at all start-ups from a business perspective. Go through the user-research, which Peter believes might be the most important. The goal is to really build your relationships over time, and to build a team you can trust. Trust people with money because they trust you with money. Really understand your teammates strengths and weaknesses so as you grow your company your team grows with you.

https://mixpose.com/