One of the most-asked questions I get when working with a team on strategy is, “What’s next?” “What kind of cutting edge products and services can I expect to see soon?”
A great place to look is at the intersection of investment and entrepreneurship. To gain the most up-to-date insights, I regularly attend showcase sessions around the country. Recently, I had a chance to attend The Minnesota Venture Conference in Minneapolis and Launch Wisconsin in Green Bay. What I have assembled below by category is not exhaustive, but a representative sampler of interesting memes and themes that are either in incubation or in the market today. While primarily startups, these firms are all in different stages of maturity. Some are so fresh they are still boot strapped by friends and family, while others are up and running companies.
The Perfect Storm = Smart Cloud + Inexpensive Hardware
The underlying driver of much of the work being done these days is the unbelievable democratization and access that inexpensive cloud services and hardware continues to enable across vertical after vertical. We are seeing a move from general SaaS firms to very specific verticals and hardware becoming a specific part of the solution.
Some interesting examples:
- POPS! has utilized the smartphone, glucose sensors and the smart cloud to create a revolutionary upgrade in diabetes management. Diabetics are the largest and fastest growing patient population, so any improvement is personally and socially really powerful.
- Sentera is building on the drone platform (developed while a government contractor) to provide high-value agriculture services based on the ubiquity and reduced cost of drone flights over fields. Sensors on the drone will literally affect what goes into the ground for each square meter of soil in real time.
Logistics
As Amazon, UPS and FedEx battle it out for the small package services, the large scale, long-haul market is also experiencing technology-driven improvements. Fundamental changes in large container and long-haul freight continue to unlock cost savings and environmental improvement.
- Match Back Systems is a SaaS firm that solves the thorny issue of empty transportation containers and the inefficiency that results. Lane Hub, on the other hand, is a system that uses social-media like sharing to choose the best possible combination of shippers over a given route.
- Breakthrough Fuel has a full suite of modeling tools that allow firms to optimize their fuel usage, reduce their carbon footprint, and reduce overall costs while causing the least amount of environmental disruption.
Highly-customized community market spaces
We are moving into the next evolution of digital community, with highly-tailored experiences that blur the lines between community generated content, commercial activity and blogs. My sense is that this is where some really valuable and sticky long run relationships and valuable businesses will emerge over the next few years. It will be fun to watch the battle between the small start ups and the Facebook groups.
- Kidizen has built a two-sided marketplace around buying and selling used children’s clothing. They leverage brand, facilitate peer-to peer interaction with buyers and seamless commerce to provide a very focused and useful service. This is clearly extensible to other community spaces, as well.
- Urban Leash offers online connection to a community of pet care individuals. If you’ve ever had a pet stranded for lack of care, you’ll get this one.
Travel and Entertainment
These two firms seek to access the huge market for customizing experiences to plan and consume content while traveling. As the world shifts to customized, on-demand experiences – pulled by specific individual preferences – this space is poised for growth.
- VUGO is a unique tool to customize the rideshare experience by delivering great relevant video content into an Uber or Lyft for that customer. Again, a two-sided business model for both the advertiser and the driver.
- Adestinn has a unique model that allows firms to set up a VSA (vacation savings account) that gives them the opportunity to provide a corporate match of $0.50 on every dollar deposited. There is an epidemic of unused vacation time in North America, and this might be a way to begin to move the needle. This two-sided model then gives employees access to top hotels with the best price and no blackout guarantees.
Early Generational Engagement
We are now in the generation that has been born with iPhones. This has created a huge gap in filling expectations that is still in its infancy. As such, we are seeing the first wave of applications that were designed for mobile first in an effort to engage this generation.
- FANSchool uses a combination of gamification and compelling content to engage today’s highly distracted student in developing deep reading habits. Picture students drafting countries of states rather than fantasy football stars.
- Live.Give.Save uses an app that allows smartphone payment users to designate micro amounts to charity and savings as the go about their normal shopping. This make-sense tool builds on the millennial need for purpose meme that continues to strengthen.
An Avalanche of Medical
In addition to the large number of big data plays, there are some interesting hardware plays as well. I would suggest that wave two of big data in medicine will be hardware integration, and we are in the early days.
- Lite Run has a unique combination of pneumatics and computation that allows physical therapy patients to regain mobility using an inflatable exoskeleton.
- Voxello – is a unique patient interface for incapacitated patients who cannot use the traditional bedside fob that allows them to regain the ability to summon support by using modes other than pushing the button (a tongue click, eye blink, etc.).
Physics Still Matters
Physical products, and those related to the core sciences, tend to not get much press in the startup world, where time to exit pressure can limit the ability of really fundamental changes to come forward.
Both of these firms had the advantage of being developed in environments with deep pockets. (Cleveland Clinics in one case, and The University of Minnesota in another)
- A spin out from Cleveland Clinic, Prevent Biometrics has developed a wirelessly connected shock-sensing mouth guard, that can give real-time concussion alerts to sideline staff. It turns out that if detected early, concussion recovery can be twice as fast.
- Minnepura Technologies has developed an encapsulation method that allows it to directly treat water issues that have vexed the mechanical filtered world for some time. They have worked on issues as diverse as Ag runoff, removal of pharma products and residential recreation.
Business Model Disruption
Clayton Christensen was correct – there is big value in disrupting business models. These two firms are blurring the lines of existing services and providing solutions that use the best of two fields to supercharge the results. The “third way” is both more powerful and more effective than either of its predecessors.
- The Big Know is combining a world-class learning platform with brand marketing. By allowing firms to teach, they have increased consumer eyeball time from seconds – to in some cases – as long as 56 minutes. The classes are compelling and brands get a chance to have consumers really try them out.
- Equals 3 has built an engine for marketing professionals, essentially a layer on top of IBM’s Watson, that allows IBM’s enormous computation capability to be applied to marketing databases. While a human can only look at data superficially, Watson can scan decades of trends.
So, I hope you have a sense of the diversity of the exploration and some of the use cases that are being moved forward through the hard work of dedicated entrepreneurs.
One of the services I provide my clients is a process to identify Future Capabilities that a firm needs to be engaged in. If you find this all interesting, but struggle with a systematic framework to make the future real for your firm, we should talk.
If you’d like to have a real (non sales), 20 minute working session discovery call, please give me a call at 847-651-1014 or send me an email.
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