About SpotOn and what they do
so SpotOn GPS fans is a virtual containment system. It's wireless, it's portable, and it keeps you dog contained. And the way it works is you can create a fence by walking the perimeter that you want to contain your dog in, or you could draw the fence on your smartphone. Once you do that, you save the fence to the collar. And now you can activate it in keep your dog safe at home. Or if you wish to travel, it's portable, you can take it to a friend's house, parents house, relative's home, camping Beach, wherever you go, you can take your dog with you, because they're part of the family. And that's a great part of it. It's portable, and it gives you feedback. If the dog should leave the perimeter, you get notified on your phone.
How their product works
All right, so here's the SpotOn collar. And we have three sizes, we have small, medium, and large. And that spans dogs that have its neck circumference of 10 inches, all the way up to 28. So even the biggest bullmastiffs if you will use our color, which is amazing, and a lot of livestock Guardian dogs that just roam around and protect the livestock it's truly amazing. So here's the SpotOn color. We have on this side, this is where the battery resides, there's a lithium ion polymer battery rechargeable. And here is a button and look at that. And there's some LEDs that give you status. And this is where all the electronics reside. And what sets it sets us apart from, you know, other potential players or players in the market is, is this GNSS antenna. And if you look at where it resides, it's at the back or top of the dog's neck. And it has clear visibility to the sky, which is the most optimal place you want to put a GPS antenna. And so that's why we can achieve the accuracy that we get based on where it's located. And obviously the proprietary nature of the antenna itself. So SpotOn color also communicates to a mobile app. And here's an example, this collar here has a fence active here at the office, which is displayed. And if I were to walk outside with this collar and cross the boundary, I wouldn't get notifications displayed on the app of what's going on, and also be able to track right now I'm indoors, I don't have GPS signal. But you could also track yourself, you know, I could go outside and track myself walking around the parking lot if I wanted to. So that's kind of the value of the app is if you don't have line of sight of your dog. If you have large property like five acres worth your dogs out somewhere, you can just click Refresh location and see exactly where your dog is almost in real time. And if your dog does leave the boundary, you get a notification and you could track in real time and go retrieve your dog. So that you know the the app adds a lot of feature and benefits to the user kind of given that peace of mind that they can always go track back their dog.
A look at their engineering team
So we have myself, the VP of engineering, we have an electrical engineer, we have an embedded software engineer. And we have an engineering technician. We do all the electronics. We do the embedded software in hardware. We actually outsource our smartphone app and cloud system to a third party partner that is working very well for us. And so the app in the cloud, in the collar itself, they all communicate via cellular, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, whatever the communication protocol is. That's how the team is built. We have expertise in pretty much all areas with the exception of like I mentioned, mobile app and cloud experience.
Details on their tech stack
So the tech stack is you know, we have a cloud system out there. You know, we have cloud system that sits on AWS. You know, it's a platform called what's referred to as a software as a service that talks directly to our smartphone app based, you know, that runs on Android iPhone and Android. And that is a React Native based platform. And a lot of the cloud technology is JavaScript based. And there's some other technologies woven in there as well. But that's the base of it. In terms of the color hardware and software, embedded, low power Internet of Things, electronics, very low resources, because you need to have the battery lasts as long as you can, while it's on the dog, obviously. So it's very low, low power. And operates in real time. And it's basically event based, anything that happens that we've decided to be an event, any notifications, any breaches, if you will, across the perimeter, notifications get sent to your smartphone, and you're able to track in real time if your dog somehow escapes the boundary.
Cool projects engineers get to work on
So we're, you know, we're still a startup, we're still considered a startup, and we just launched our second generation. And based on that, you know, we need to be able to offer new features and stay ahead of our competition. So the cool things that we get to work on our new features added to the app, for example, we just released Yeah, as of yesterday, what's called home and keep out zones. And one of the cool things about that is, if you have a big fence, or a big yard, so most people, most of our customers have 510 acres. And within the 510 acres of containment, they have areas where they want to keep their dog out of so you can actually drag keep out zone to keep your dog out of that area, like a pond or garden. And you can also draw homezone, so that when you know, when your dog enters that zone, you get notified. So you know your dog safely home, if you're at work, or if you're traveling with your dog at home. So those are some of the cool things that we're working on is just creating new features. And added value for our customers.
What to expect during the interview process
So the interview process at SpotOn is, you know, I usually reach out, I look at applications resumes. And when I see that there's a good, potentially good fit, I'll reach out to the person and have a one hour discussion, screen call. And based on the screen call, if that goes well, we'll invite the person in for an hour face to face interview. And based on that you will talk about, you know kind of their passion, talk about why they're interested in SpotOn. And what they want to do to make a difference and be passionate about what they do. So kind of get the feel of how they'll fit in into our culture, because we're very passionate about dogs and keeping them safe and keeping them happy with their families. So once we get past the first two hours, one over the phone second in person, then we'll invite him in for a third time to speak with the rest of the team, the mechanical engineer or the other engineers, some of the leadership team, and make sure that they're a culture fit. Because obviously, you know, you want both sides to be compatible, you have the employee, the individual be a good fit in the culture, and, and so on, so forth. So that's that's kind of, the interview process.
Details on SpotOn's culture
So one thing I like to talk about is, you know, obviously their metrics that we use, but I think the best metric is we want each other to succeed, and we'll go out of our way to help each other. accomplish that. Because if the person next to you succeeds, we all succeed at the end of the day. So that's kind of like the kind of non metric feel culture of SpotOn. Other than that, you know, we love to innovate, you know, we were the first to this market, we created the category, we love to make data driven decisions, you know, based on data that we received, make very sound decisions. We are problem solvers always want to look for the next problem to solve. And so with that culture of wanting each other to succeed and having metrics against that, I think the culture is you know, fun, wanting to grow and innovate, be the first to do whatever the next thing is.
Why they should be on your radar
So SpotOn should be on the radar, the radar for engineers, because we're true innovators were the first to create the category that we're in, and we have patents to back that up. We want to hire engineers to come in and have a voice and be able to innovate, collaborate, and be able to provide a skill set that challenges the rest of the team. And so we always want people to speak up, have their ideas, talk about it collaborate. And at the end of the day that makes the best product and that's what we always seek. So we you know, we bring engineers in to, to develop and grow their skills, and also contribute to something that they're passionate about. And create a great product for the consumer, who really, you know, the consumer is, is what we're focused on here. And I think, as an engineer, it's great to see a product out there that people actually use and trust in and find value in
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