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Before becoming the Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer of Xander, Marilyn Morgan Westner spent 20+ years researching and educating at Harvard, Harvard Business School, and UMass Boston. Xander makes real-time captioning glasses for people that have hearing or cognition challenges in processing speech. Listen to Marilyn’s conversation with host Tanya Perkins, COO of Tembo Health, as she discusses what compelled her to become a co-founder, who inspired her desire to change lives, and how to find the right group to work with. Marilyn and her husband Alex Westner, CEO, both quit their jobs to start this company and are continuously motivated by their users to overcome obstacles. She shares highs and lows that they’ve experienced during the early stages of the company, and advises on finding the right co-founder. Listen now to find out how Xander was able to go to market in just 10 months.
Tanya Perkins, Host:
Welcome to AgeTech Talks, conversations about AgeTech powered by AgeTech Collaborative from AARP, leading a global mission to drive innovation at the nexus of longevity and technology. You’re tuning in to a series of discussions recorded live at CES 2024 that highlight the dynamic startup founders who are making aging easier for everyone by pioneering innovative AgeTech solutions. In conversation with fellow startup founders Kyle Rand and Tanya Perkins, each episode invites an AgeTech Collaborative startup founder to discuss their journey and share the invaluable lessons they’ve learned along the way. Today we are thrilled to have Marilyn Morgan Westner, co-founder and chief content officer of Xander to share their story.
All right. Good morning, all of you out there in CES Land. This is Tanya Perkins with the AgeTech Collaborative from AARP, and I’m doing startup stories here live from CES, and my guest this morning is Marilyn Morgan-Westner. Hi, how are you doing?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
I’m great, Tanya. How are you?
Tanya Perkins:
I am doing great. So we’re going to get into a lot of things this morning, but first thing to get into, tell us really quickly, what does Xander do?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
Xander makes real time captioning glasses to help people with hearing challenges or people who have cognition challenges in processing speech. So we basically show captions of conversations in real time.
Tanya Perkins:
Tell us about you. What makes Marilyn tick?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
It’s always thinking about other people. That’s why a little bit… It feels a little awkward to be here having this conversation because I am so much more comfortable thinking about what other people are feeling. I’m a very empathetic person. That’s actually in part how I got interested in this company. So I had a great uncle who I was really close with when I was younger, and he was vivacious and wonderful and charming and like a second grandfather. And when he lost his hearing, he completely changed. He would pat me on the hand and say, “Dear, I can’t hear.” And everyone loved him, but his wife, they had no kids of their own, his wife would sort of belittle him. I mean, think about it. You get exasperated when somebody can’t hear you, and he refused to wear hearing aids. And so everyone sort of made this his problem, “This is your fault.”
And I just remember watching this and for years I saw this progression and thinking, well, God, that’s terrible, would that be like. So when you ask what makes me tick, what makes me tick is thinking about other people and okay, if I see that somebody needs a tissue or they’re uncomfortable, that’s just sort of how I’m built that I want to help, if that makes sense. I’m much more comfortable doing that than thinking about myself, which leads to all kinds of other problems, but…
Tanya Perkins:
Okay. So can you tell us a little bit more about how the company came to be and how you and your co-founder decided to go about doing this?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
Well, full credit goes to Alex in terms of it being his idea. His background is in audio, so he actually was part of a team that won an engineering Emmy for sounds, cleaning up sound. So he spent his career learning about sound. So I’m not an audio person, but this is an audio problem. So he actually was diagnosed with an eye condition and he thought, well, what am I going to do if I lose my vision? He’s my husband too. Again, full disclosure. And I was like, oh, yeah, what are we going to do if this happens? Luckily, that condition seems to have stable… He’s fine but it prompted us to go down this road of, well, what do we do to make the world better? I know that sounds so cliche, but really, how do we make a contribution with the talents and gifts that we have? What do we do? How do we turn that to make this world better?
And so he had this idea of, well, if people can’t hear, but I know how to clean up speech, what exists out there to help people who can’t help with hearing aids? So we got on this captioning glasses idea. Then my point was, oh, I want to help these people. So initially I did not want to be a founder. He started doing this business sort of on the side, and I was working actually at Harvard Business School helping other people build their businesses. So I know how hard it is to be a founder. I heard so many founder stories. I was on your side of microphone often getting founder stories and learning and writing about them, trying to help people navigate pitfalls, and I didn’t want to do it. It’s really hard. It consumes your life. My living room, every room, our kitchen, there’s stuff about the company everywhere, as I’m sure you know, also being a founder.
And you can’t sleep and you start thinking about people and you wake up in the middle of the night and it’s hard. And then when you’re married to your co-founder… So I kept saying, no, I don’t want to do this. And then it just happened. I was like, well, it’s not going to happen. We both believe in it. I’m doing it anyway. I’m going to help. Yes, let’s do it. Let’s just jump in. Let’s quit our stable jobs and do this company. So that’s kind of what happened.
Tanya Perkins:
What would you say was that moment that you decided that, “Oh, oh goodness, I am doing this.”? What did you see? What did you feel?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
I think I knew that I was going to do it even though I was reluctant. It was the first interview we did with this woman who put the glasses on… And this was during the pandemic, so we were meeting outside with masks. It’s very hard to test a hardware product that’s reading, that’s listening when people are wearing masks. So immediately it was like, oh, this is helpful. She was very reluctant, but then she loved it, and then she emailed us afterwards and said, “This changed my life. I don’t have a headache. Usually it’s really hard for me.” So that was the moment where I was like, oh, I am important. Because I went with Alex, wasn’t going to record it, and I like doing what you’re doing, asking people questions about themselves, so I’m very good at that part and I realized he’s got the business side of this. He has the engineering, he understands all of that, and I don’t, but I’ve got the people side. You can’t just have one without the other. You can be a brilliant founder if you’re just the tech person.
I bake cookies for some of our people. I send them thank yous. I really try to have that personal touch. And not in a manipulative way, but in a way that… I love to bake, why not bake for these people? They gave me their time. They sat down with me. I learned from them. I feel like we learned from every single person too. And although it is all consuming, although it is sometimes terrifying, although I wake up in cold sweats often in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t do anything else. I loved the job I left. It was the best job I ever had. And yes, sometimes I think, why did I do that? This is crazy. You must think that too sometimes, right? Like, what have I just done? But it’s also so rewarding and so wonderful when you do really help people. I think I knew from the beginning.
Tanya Perkins:
I love that you knew from the beginning and that you admit it. “Hey, you know what? I totally knew I was going to do this. I was reluctant, but that moment that I saw where I fit, boom, I was in.” By the way, I love analogies. I’m digging in, so let’s dig into this boat one. But if of you’ve ever actually been in a boat and you started rowing, especially with one skill set, you start going in circles, you literally need someone else with complementary skill set. Anyone out there considering being a founder, looking for their co-founder, it’s about complementary skill set. But in your case, you and Alex had the complementary skill set. Well, you also happen to be married. So let’s dig into that. What is that like in a marriage?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
It’s hard. It’s really hard. But this is my second marriage and his second marriage, and I think there’s something about being a little older and doing this too that makes sense. But I can’t lie. It’s very hard because sometimes it’s just like, we’re never ever not talking about the business. It’s just always there. But then if you reframe it and think, well, it’s like a child, right? A child is always with you, and we both really believe that this will help people and we believe in it, so when things get really hard and I’m like, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” Because everyone has those moments, and if a founder says that they don’t, I think that they’re probably a little delusional because it can be really hard. And when you’re married to that person, it’s often also hard, but it can be great.
I got this advice from another couple, another woman who was married to her co-founder. And she said they just decided they would be all in. They weren’t going to try to do the separation of, oh, we’re not going to talk about the business here, but they brought their kids in. Where they worked, they were always together, and they just acknowledged it. And I kind of think that’s what we have to do because we’re going to talk about it anyway. When we’re going for a walk in the morning, we’re talking about the business, it’s always there, so why not just embrace it and love it? We’ll have those moments where I’ll be like, “I can’t take it anymore. We have to clean all this up. We have to find…” We live in a very small condo in Boston, so we don’t have a big old house where we have all the space, so it can be really tight and confusing, but you just have to remind yourself, this is a privilege. I get to do this.
When I think, oh, I don’t have any separation of work and life, it’s like, well, I’m also not commuting. I’m not going and I’m doing what I want to do and I get to help people. So as much effort as I put in, there is that reward. And I know that, again, probably sounds cliche, but it’s true. When you’re doing things for other people, even if you love that job, you’re not controlling the outcome. So we’re controlling as much as we can. It goes with your input. I feel like I’m doing a terrible job with this.
Tanya Perkins:
I think you’re doing a great job in fact. You just shared with us your mindset about like, hey, I’m all in. I’m just going to accept that this is a part of my life and not try to cleave off parts of myself because that’s not authentic. Let’s talk about your startup journey. Let’s go into some of those points on the roller coaster and on high notes. So let’s talk about first a low note. Can you share with us a time when you were at that bottom of that roller coaster on that dip, and you were like, ‘You know what? I went off. Can someone just stop the ride?” Can you share with us? What did that look like? And then what got you to just keep your seatbelt buckled?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
We had a moment like that not too long ago. So in December, we delivered eight pairs of our glasses to veterans in Georgia. And these are people who tried the product in May. Loved it. It was life changing, right? Were reacting so strongly how this was improving their lives. So fast forward to December. We dropped them off. We are so excited to give them to them. They’re going to own them. No, they’re not happy. They were anxious. And the one man who was the most enthused seemed really tense and nervous. And in retrospect, there were lots of reasons, but one of them was, it’s one thing to test a product and like it, it’s another thing to take it home and be responsible for it, and then to have to learn how to work it. And so we were sitting there and it turned out he was getting an error message and we’re like, oh my God.
It was very minor and we fixed it, but it was a moment that we just wanted to cry and go home. One of the pairs of glasses that we brought actually were broken, which we had no idea why they were, so it was a really low moment. It all turned out fine, but it was really hard.
Tanya Perkins:
Thank you for, first of all, for sharing. Again, so many people think that they just have to tell the perfect story, so sharing a low like that, that’s not easy. If we bring it back to what you said before, right? It’s having a business is like having a child. So actually let’s talk about that other end of the analogy. What was a highlight for you in the business over the last couple of years?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
Well, there were two. One had to do with the same people that I was talking about. We saw someone have a conversation with his doctor for the first time ever. So he had seen this doctor for something like eight years, and they had been writing. He has no hearing, he can’t get a cochlear implant, so they would just communicate through writing through an iPad. So we were in a room where we had several veterans. They all had glasses on. And at one point the doctor said, “Oh my God, this is the first time we’ve talked.” Because she would talk and he could hear and them respond. So instead of writing, he was able to listen and talk back. And then a few of the veterans who had the glasses on were talking to each other and saying, “Oh yeah, it’s like he said.” And we were all teary because she said, “I’ve never had a conversation with you. I just heard you say, ‘That’s what he said.’”
So they could hear each other. They couldn’t hear each other, but everyone says that, “Oh, I heard what you said,” Or they think that they’re hearing even though they’re reading. And it was just amazing. We met with also a veteran whose wife said, “This will change my life because I’m a caregiver. We can’t go to restaurants. We can’t do this.” And she kept saying, “You can hear me.” She also kept saying he could hear us. Even though she didn’t have hearing loss, she put them on to see what it was like, and so they were both happy. And then the same day that we had the low, we also had a high, the doctor did testing without the glasses and with the glasses. Without the glasses, there are tests on that hearing was… They got four words right out of a hundred.
So with the glasses, they got four words wrong. So even though it seemed like they malfunctioned, we had this awful hiccup moment, we did make it right, and by the end of the day, everything was fine. So it was literally four hours of, “Oh my God, this is the worst.” “Oh wow, this is great. He did this test really well.” And now he is really happy. So it’s sometimes just becoming comfortable in those intense moments of discomfort, and like having to survive them.
Tanya Perkins:
Wow, what you’ve just described is blowing my mind. So let’s go back to that stat that you just said, by the way. So four out of a hundred right without the glasses. Can you describe what that is like? Is that someone with low hearing, looking at someone talking and they’re lip reading?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
They do a test in audiology where they have something up so they can’t read lips, so it’s just doing the hearing. So they’ll read words and the person will have to repeat back what they say. And so they got only four words right without the glasses with the hearing aids. That’s the level of severe to profound hearing loss, and they were at that end of the spectrum. When he put the glasses on, did the same test, not seeing what she was saying by reading lips, but just reading the text of the glasses, so the glasses will listen and then show the words, he only missed four words.
Tanya Perkins:
Wow.
Marylin Morgan Westner:
So that’s why the doctors like them, the audiologists really liked them for that reason.
Tanya Perkins:
Amazing. I mean, I knew it was going to be interesting, but I just did not have a clue that this is where your technology was going. Let’s talk a little bit about getting into this space. In particular, as you guys know, we’re podcasting at CES. We’re sitting in the AgeTech Collaborative from AARP’s Pavilion. Within the Pavilion, we have tons of startups who are focusing in on technology that is helping folks with the second half of their century. And as we’ve also talked about, a lot of that is not only for the second half of your century or for disabilities, but it’s really for all of us, right? With all of that in mind, if someone’s out there thinking about, “Hey, you know what? I’ve got this idea. I really, really think that it may be able to help folks in their second half of their century.” What would you say to someone who’s thinking about going down this path and starting that type of company?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
I would tell them to check out the AgeTech Collaborative because it’s so wonderful. I mean, being a part of this ecosystem has been invaluable. There are so many people here. We have nothing in common, and yet we’re all working towards this common goal. And so there are people that we might meet that might need their solution or it’s just talk. I feel like one of the hardest things about starting a business is finding the right investor too. And so that’s where this collaborative is so wonderful. And it truly is collaborative because it’s a bunch of people who are just committed to really helping themselves, but also each other. I think that’s so critical. So if you have an idea, it’s all about finding the right people, I’m convinced. So it’s not only just the right co-founder, the right team. It’s worth waiting for the right team, I think. Being a part of the right group like this, get involved.
There are so many accelerators out there. Some are more helpful than others, but this… We participated in, I guess everybody here must have, the AgeTech Collaborative, we were one of the cohorts. It was the most valuable accelerator. I don’t even know if accelerator’s the right word for it, but it was the most valuable accelerator that we have ever done. We got one-on-one help with a wonderful portfolio manager who instead of just walking- um a lot of accelerators will have you do generic things. We actually got to tailor what we were doing. We got so much benefit. It propelled us. We went to market within 10 months. I’m hearing that that’s pretty rare to go from pre-seed founding to market. And I swear that is. Not because I’m sitting in this booth that I’m saying that, a lot of that had to do with what we learned from the collaborative.
And it might’ve been in part when we joined, we were a little bit more mature when we got to be a part of it, but it was so valuable. The people that are here, Amelia, the CTA Foundation. I would definitely say to look at the CTA Foundation as well. And there are lots of other great organizations, but just to get connected with people. And then always, if somebody says a no, ask, well, who else can I talk to? What else can I learn from that? But that’s what’s been really valuable for us.
Tanya Perkins:
Oh, so many goodies in that. How did you find the AgeTech Collaborative, and then what did you see and read that you said, you know what? Not only do we have to apply, but we’ve got to do this?
Marylin Morgan Westner:
Well, last year we came to CES with the CTA Foundation. We were very fortunate and we got an award for accessibility tech. So I think that’s how we learned about AgeTech actually is being here. We’re like, oh my God, this is amazing. The whole ecosystem here is phenomenal. You could find help for whatever you need, and all of the founders are passionate. So we pitched at the AgeTech After Dark last year. We didn’t win AgeTech After Dark, but it was such a great fun experience to be there, to be pitching. And that’s when we knew we really wanted to be a part of it. This would be so valuable because you get access to people who have experience in this space and who are knowledgeable, but beyond that, who are passionate because if you get connected with people who just aren’t passionate about the problem, it’s not going to be as meaningful. It’s just this generic going through it.
We were in a really prestigious accelerator. It wasn’t useful, nearly as useful, and I do believe it’s part of that the people here are so committed, at least all the people that I have met are so committed to this program, and they get to know the founders, they get to know their mission, and they really want to help.
Tanya Perkins:
I wish all of you could be in the booth with me and have seen Marilyn’s expression when she said what her experience was like with pitching at AgeTech After Dark. Common theme that I’m hearing from everybody in the pavilion as well as folks that we’ve been interviewing is that pitching with the AgeTech Collaborative is like no others. So if you are out there and you’re wondering, should I apply? Should I pitch? I say go do it. Sounds like you get great feedback that’s going to further your business. Even if you don’t get in that way, but in general, it sounds like a really great experience, so thank you for echoing that. And again, thank you for the chills this morning.
Marylin Morgan Westner:
Thank you for having me. This was so much fun. It was so wonderful.
Tanya Perkins:
Thanks for listening to AgeTech Talks from AgeTech Collaborative from AARP. You can learn more about today’s guest and all the innovative startups in the AgeTech Collaborative by visiting the startup directory on AgeTechCollaborative.org.
