TellSpec

TechTalk by Kelsey Anderson

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A quick show of hands

Smart phones
Food
Pollution
Nutrition

It started with an illness

Isabel Hoffmann moved from Europe with her family and her
daughter started to experience a type of illness that caused
hives, low blood pressure, tremors, and light sensitivity.
Doctor suggested mold toxicity and he was right.
Isabel could not understand how
some people live like this, so she
had an idea.
This had taken a year

Entrepreneur At Work
Handheld tool, about the size of your palm
Made to help people understand their environments, the
foods they are consuming, and how they affect their body
Is this even possible?

What does it even do?

Food: Nutrition information, ingredients and how much,
gluten/dioxins, bacteria, allergens
Home: Mold/bacteria and what kind
Air: Pollution
All information goes to the app in 1-3 seconds!
Beams a low-powered laser at the food in question, and lowenergy photons are then emitted back to the TellSpec's
spectrometer, which sorts the photons by wavelength and
determines what chemical compounds are within
Start up database included 3,000 foods but is looking to
expand to over 1 million
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 The colors determine how bad or good something is for you to consume, if
you see something that you are unsure of what it is, click on it and find out!

 Not feeling good after you eat something? Explain it to the app and it will
give you its best recommendation.

A Quick Activity
Get together with the people in your row and answer these
questions:
1. How much would you pay for a technology like this?
2. Would you buy it/is this something you feel is useful in
todays society?
3. How long do you expect it should take for a company to
produce and start selling this technology?
4. What kind of background should the people on the TellSpec
team have? (doctor, engineer, web page designer, etc.)

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How much does it cost?

Price: $350, however they are hoping to be able
to lower the price about $50-$100 after a few
years.
The app: $8 a month
Is this price worth it? Thats up to you.

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Discussion Questions
Is it possible that a technology like this could be as accurate as
they say? Why or why not?
If there are no doctors on their entrepreneur team then
should we trust their diagnosis? Why or why not?
Do you think this could be a scam? How?
What are some things that could be improved about this
technology?

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Thank you thank you!

Any questions??

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Where did I learn all of this?

http://mashable.com/2013/11/26/tellspec/
http://tellspec.com/
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-24/tellspecsfood-scanner-knows-whats-in-your-nachos
[Isabel Hoffmann portrait] TellSpec. Retrieved on 9/8/14 from
http://tellspec.com/team/
https://www.google.com/search?q=isabel+hoffman+tellspec&
client=firefox-a&hs=DD5&rls=org.mozilla:enUS:official&channel=nts&biw=1280&bih=640&source=lnms&t
bm=isch&sa=X&ei=LvENVM9GqvWLApmfgFA&ved=0CAcQ_AU
oAg#rls=org.mozilla:en http://www.gizmag.com/tellspec-food-scanner/30221/

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