Orcam is changing the game for people with visual and processing impairments. We talked to their DIrector of Product Management, Michael Druker to learn more.
Heather: Hi Michael! What’s your role on your team, and what product are you building?
Michael: I'm the Director of Product Management at OrCam. I'm building a product for the education market, a product that helps kids with dyslexia, specific reading disabilities, and learning challenges to help access material in the classroom, and improve their reading skills, techniques, and comprehension.
We have a dedicated web app that helps teachers with much deeper analysis of the reading. Not just the feedback that the student is getting, but deeper analysis of the reading that can actually give the teacher specific actionable items that they can take from there and work with the student instead of wasting a lot of time and assessing reading with them. If the product is successful, it means that less students will fall behind as a result of learning challenges. This will level the playground for all the kids. We're not talking about only dyslexic students or challenged readers. We're also talking about English language learners, immigrants or people who are US native.
Heather: If you’re successful in your mission, how will it impact the world?
Michael: Right now, if you look at the United States general population, you have up to 20% of the people who have dyslexia or other rising challenges. These kids are struggling during the entire experience in the education system. They have very low self esteem which makes it more difficult for them to be independent. They're using teachers to read aloud to them instead of reading by themselves. They're feeling inadequate while they're actually not.
We're trying to provide kids the ability to thrive and fulfill their potential without the limitations and helping them navigate throughout the educational system. We also made it available directly to consumers because not every school would buy it, and not every school will be able to purchase it for all the kids that really need it. We want to offer it to all people who can use it to improve their child's chances of succeeding. If you think about it, everything we do is based on reading. If you can't read, you can't progress in the world. Period.
But people, when they use solutions like this, it drives them to be more creative in many cases. So we're just providing them the little bit of help that helps them get to the end.
Heather: How did you get into IoT?
Michael: I actually worked in several different industries. I worked in genetics, I worked in Ed Tech, Advertisement Technologies and I also had my own startup company that helped parents protect their children on mobile devices.
So I was in many industries, but one thing that was in common is the use of AI as part of the solution. So in many cases it was image processing and then in genetics it's combining the genetics information with medical information and behavior patterns into one algorithm and then getting insights and predictions for the users. So the ability to work with AI teams is what helped me through my career. At OrCam, we have three different AI teams that are dedicated to OrCam Learn. I also work with the people who develop software on the device, I work with the people who develop the mobile app, the web app, the server side. Obviously, in addition to the Dev teams, I work closely with Marketing, Sales, Customer Success and more.
The main ability is to be able to use my soft skills to navigate the ship, to make everyone play well with each other and to be able to translate the market needs and requirements. When you speak with experts, you speak with potential clients and users, you understand what they want. You need to translate it to what they really need. You have to take their needs, translate it to something that is doable, create requirements, make sure that they are aligned and then create a roadmap accordingly and deliver the product.
So this process works in every industry, whether it's IoT, cybersecurity, healthcare or other industries. Being able to understand your clients is one of the main pillars.
Heather: What advice do you have for aspiring product leaders?
Michael: In many cases, startups or companies are built around technology and you need first to understand that you are actually filling some kind of need. You need to identify the pain of your target audience. Then you need to understand what your target audience is. Understand the market. Never be in a situation where you say there are no competitors to our product, regardless of how unique it is. We can always say that there is a solution. So you need to identify the need, find the target audience, find where this target audience is, how to address them, and speak with them. You can't imagine or just do a lot of research about them. You need to interview the users, you need to speak with them to better understand them. You need to practice how to do it. Building your roadmap is important, and getting everybody engaged and committed to it is super important. But unless you're building what's needed, you will fail.
