Sophia Dominguez (Snap) on the Importance of Product Focus (Part 2)

AR Show with Jason McDowall

Sophia Dominguez is the Director of AR Platform Partnerships and Ecosystem at Snap, where she’s been the last three years.

Previously, she started the widely followed “All Things VR” newsletter and joined Rothenberg Ventures as an Entrepreneur in Residence before co-founding her first company, SVRF. There she created the first API and SDKs for searching and rendering 3D face filters. They powered over 280M AR experiences, and Sophia successfully sold the company to Poplar before joining Snap.

Sophia began her career by attending NYU with a focus on how technology impacts human interaction. She then organized one of the world’s first wearable technology conferences, before working in product and operations for a startup focused on visual messaging.

In this, the second of our two-part conversation, Sophia talks more about utility and the role technology should overtly play in our lives.

We go on to talk about about:
- Snap’s wearables strategy as well as the hopes and recognized gaps,
- expected benefits of being laser focused on AR rather than also working on VR or MR,
- Snap’s perspective on privacy, and
- how recent advancements in AI fit into AR.

As an added bonus in this episode, we hear from two Snap partners:
- Yusuf Omar, co-founder of SEEN, and
- Michael Nicoll, founder and Creative Director at BLNK Digital

I had a chance to briefly chat with them both at the recent Snap Partner Summit, and we’ll start the episode there.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.