episode 54: Hongwei Liu: What It Takes to Actually Map the Indoors, Hard Work & Finding the Right Things to Work on - MBM#54
Hongwei Liu is the CEO & Co-Founder of MappedIn, a company focused on indoor mapping. I know a lot about what it takes to map the outdoor world, but little about what’s required to map indoors. That’s what this conversation is about.
Episode Sponsor: SkyFi
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About HongweiNote: Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. I earn a small commission if you buy any of these books.
- MappedIn
- Maker, their free new iOS app
- My conversation with James Killick
- 3D Gaussian Splatting Github repository
- Hongwei’s blog
- How I got into startups
- My video on how satellite images work
- Book & podcast recommendation:
- Hardcore History
- The Catcher in the Rye (Amazon Affiliate)
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:03) - Sponsor: SkyFi
(02:13) - Hongwei Describes Himself
(04:45) - "Accidentally" Starting a company
(08:15) - Solving a technological vs a people problem
(10:21) - Starting a business as students
(13:45) - Sales is about convincing people
(17:50) - Continuing to experiment
(21:42) - What does it actually take to map the indoors?
(26:32) - Maps vs Models
(28:01) - Why do we even need good indoor maps?
(34:58) - An indoor approach to Tesla's mapping
(41:04) - All Privacy aside, what would it take to automate indoor mapping?
(45:39) - Making a free mapping app
(48:25) - Product vs Sales lead companies
(01:02:12) - "Only the paranoid survive"
(01:06:15) - AR/VR
(01:09:35) - Hongwei's hard work ethic
(01:11:05) - Unconventional path
(01:16:42) - Difficulty of finding your own lane
(01:21:38) - Grinding for the people that coming after
(01:25:21) - Faith
(01:28:45) - Visiting China
(01:34:50) - Misunderstandings through language
(01:40:22) - Leveraging the internet
(01:43:16) - Book & Podcast Recommendations
(01:45:29) - Consider supporting me on Patreon
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- Podcast Twitter
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- Edited by Peter Xiong. Find more of his work