How to Stay Home During the Pandemic and Become Happier and More Effective Than Before

How Moses Wong is using Siremix to offer high-quality audio products to the world, and making high-end audio affordable for everyone.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Moses Wong: We are doing fine, and we have more time staying together as a family. A pandemic is a tragic event as we are all experiencing, however, looking at its positive side, it enhances global infrastructures, makes them more resilient to unknowns, supercharge technology advancement, and provides us all a room to seek inner solidity. Our world will evolve to a better place after all.

I am an entrepreneur and a data scientist. And I have witnessed the rate of change towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution first-hand. Statistics show that the change is much accelerated during the pandemic, and this will continue after the pandemic. Companies are being forced to take more radical approaches, including major structural change, and many big companies are ripping off results implementing AI, analytics, and automation, and others, especially their competitors, will follow. 

Eventually, every company will become an AI-powered company. Siremix is a German technology company providing cutting-edge audio products, AI and Deep Learning play an important role in our product roadmap, although AI is not part of our product offer right now. We are researching the possibilities of using Deep Learning to create next-generation audio technologies.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Siremix.

Moses Wong: During the pandemic, I am locked down and work from home. Like many others, I spend most of my time at home, fortunately, I can enjoy stunning graphics from the latest computing technologies, e.g., my favourite GPU from NVIDIA ® with its latest close-to-reality ray-tracing technologies, and together with my recently developed sound tech, most trendy video games, e.g., Cyberpunk 2077, and the highly anticipated VR game Star Wars® Squadrons gives me the best in the world, stunning, teleported experiences. In fact, I have more time with these great entertainments during this pandemic than before, and I am happy about that.

We are providing hardware and software products that are based on a new sound reproduction theory called Endpoint Mixing ® (EM), which I invented in 2014. EM is truly ground-breaking, and it provides a new and better way to produce sound. With EM, customers are receiving 3D sound effects so realistic you are like teleported to another world, furthermore, it enhances overall sound quality by 4-10 times compared to the legacy stereo audio. EM gives VR users a natural and immersive experience, and reliable tests show that EM can significantly reduce VR motion sickness.

I was curious about everything since childhood, I was always obsessed with new ideas, at 12 years old, I spent a year imagining a design, something now we call Virtual Reality. That was the time without the Internet and no access to books of any kind about such thing, it was purely from my head. I never believed in school education and tried to find ways around the status quo, and I think following the footsteps of others is a bad idea. Later, I had ideas like tablets, drones, and wireless speakers, but they exist on paper only, and I never put them into action. I finally ended my regrets with this invention in action as a new venture. The day I formulated this idea, I wrote for the record, “this is going to be something incredible.” Throughout these years of EM product research and development, the product amazed everyone having a chance to listen!

I founded the company in 2015 with the mission to offer high-quality audio products to the world, making high-end audio affordable for everyone. Before I started my entrepreneur journey, I worked for tech giants and specialized in cloud, cybersecurity, and C++ programming. And I am always fascinated by AI, and I was selected as a mentor of a Stanford University Machine Learning course taught by Dr. Andrew Ng. I give strategic advice to governments on an ongoing basis.

How does Siremix innovate? 

Moses Wong: We believe in human capital, encourage creativity, and share results with key personnel. The agile approach and continuous learning lay the foundation of our R&D operations.

How does the coronavirus pandemic affect your business finances?

Moses Wong: The pandemic pushed us away from focusing on hardware to focusing on Saas, or Software-as-a-service. We spent a year just developing the software and related cloud service, but when we look back, this gives us better growth potential and long-term financial benefit. Opening hardware distribution channels is slow, expensive, and highly competitive, but as we reposition on a niche offering as add-on software, it means we can sell our products to more customers in less time and directly. 

Did you have to make difficult choices regarding human resources, and what are the lessons learned?

Moses Wong: No.

How did your customer relationship management evolve? Do you use any specific tools to be efficient?

Moses Wong: We build trust with our customers through online interactions. Physical audition demo is the most effective as “hearing is believing,” but this is an expensive and slow-selling process and obviously does not work very well during the pandemic. Like many other companies, we depend on digital marketing, influencers are our focus we use an affiliate platform to manage relationships, our target groups are hardcore gamers, VR gamers, audiophiles, and professionals. But audio is a general commodity, anyone wanting inexpensive yet high-quality audio or looking for great new immersive experiences will find our product attractive.

Did you benefit from any government grants, and did that help keep your business afloat?

Moses Wong: Government grants are great, but no, we did not.

Your final thoughts?

Moses Wong: During COVID-19, most people had to stay home, home entertainment became more important. With Endpoint mixing ® technology, people can stay home to enjoy theatre-scale high-end movies, music, and gaming without going out. Free trial is available for download on our website. Our new product Smicko, AI teaching assistant, can help people study and learn at home much more effectively. Siremix can be the solution to help people go through this difficult period, to turn the threats into opportunities.

Your website?

https://www.siremix.com/