How do you sell something invisible? You make an experience out of it.
Hi, my name is Devereaux and I’m the Chief Innovation Officer for XERAPHINA. Innovation means saying no to PowerPoint funerals, I make experiences and prototypes that help create conversational couches for leadership and client buy in.
In this video I’m going to share a case study from my past. In 2019, I was thrilled to accept a role as the Head of Technology for the incubation division at Verizon. As a Ham radio operator, I am obsessed with the RF spectrum and all form of connectivities. However, I’d get in trouble for saying things like “technically 1G and 5G travel at the same speed, the speed of light because it’s electromagnetic energy.”
Fast forward to 2021 I’m leading an advanced connectivity practice at Deloitte and 5G is all the rage. Just like at my time at Verizon, I saw consultants and strategists develop databases of literally hundreds of 5G use cases. Here’s the problem though, the C-Suite does not go shopping at the Use Case Store; so how do I make this technology real for my clients?
5G operates across VHF, UHF, and EHF radio frequencies (RF). Electromagnetic energy is odorless, tasteless, cannot be seen or heard. We lack the sensory organs to even access it - so how do you sell something invisible?
After years of my personal 5G frustrations and immune to the telco cool aid I was forced to find a deeper problem. What’s disruptive about 5G is not its speed, latency, or place in the electromagnetic spectrum. What’s disruptive about 5G is that is the first class of mobility that isn’t hardware-defined, it’s software-defined. With a background in DevSecOps, once I saw connectivity as code, it truly changes the way you see mission systems.
So instead of buying sourdough starter, my covid project was to buy a Pelican case and started building in my Boston apartment.
For less than $1000 I created a Private 5G Network in a Box. This wasn’t a use case, it was the real deal. A functional 5G network I carried onto a plane and delivered it to a board room. I had a portable, field-capable 5G datacenter on public 5G CBRS spectrum. Clients could interact with the 5G core on the touch screen as an immersive experience. I could demonstrate Compression-as-a-Service making my client’s big-data problems feel smaller reducing their data-in-motion costs. I could show how to bootstrap advanced connectivity to “dumb” devices and add them to the network. And lastly, my clients could see that connectivity is code and didn’t require massive datacenter to run. And the best part is, the most expensive thing in this prototype was the laser-etched plastic with the team members names on it.
So if anyone now asks you what’s disruptive about 5G, you can now tell them you can roll your own private network with a DevSecOps team and cut your telco costs. Connectivity is now code.
Here’s what I learned:
PowerPoints fade, prototypes perform. Having a physical working solution rather than another deck meant my prototype traveled to clients, conferences, and innovation fairs thereby creating conversational spaces that couldn’t exist before.
Having something tangible that worked changed the narrative from “use cases” to “here’s what we can do with it.”
Organizations invest in technologies that make them money or save them money. Which leads me to #4:
Documenting the economic savings value of Private 5G was the solution, not the tech behind it. One client from a 5G partner saved $87 million a year in OpEx by rolling their own private 5G and cutting the cord with telco.
And lastly, telco and hyperscalers spend billions using “product as the hero” as a sales strategy. True innovation comes from breaking past the hype and finding the angle of disruption, and that’s what my 5G in a Box prototype achieved.
So the question is, what are we going to build together? Drop me a DM here or email me directly at devereaux@xeraphina.com and let’s chat about your problem.
