Few things indicate an industrial revolution better than a controversial topic that ironically becomes a unifying factor. The biggest, boldest, headlines shout that 3 in 4 Americans are afraid to drive in an autonomous car, Uber and the DMV are head to head, and the autonomous car industry has the potential to eliminate jobs in up to 128 industries. However, other headlines have written a different story. From companies to technology to cars themselves, the Autonomous Car market is driving us all into a new, collaborative future.
Considered an initial stretch on the roadway to fully autonomous cars, V2V technology, vehicle-to-vehicle, is a wireless network enabling cars to converse with each other. At the next level, the technology would extend to V2I, vehicle-to-infrastructure, enabling cars and say, stoplights, to communicate as well. Consider a future city that is completely connected, from autonomous cars to smart buildings.
Collaboration is not just in the future. Even now, auto manufacturers and car service companies are establishing surprising relationships in order to win this grounded version of the “race to space”. Industry giant General Motors has reached out to carpool service application, Lyft, to test self-driving taxis. Alphabet, Google parent and Autonomous Car technology leader, may now be an Autonomous Car social leader as well in its car project, Waymo. The company already paired with Chrysler Pacifica minivans and is now in talks with Honda on accommodating Waymo’s self-driving technology in an upcoming model – a significant change from Google’s small, bubble cars I pass on our Bay Area roads. In a recent development, Audi and Nvidia have united over autonomous cars.
Those large companies seeking committed relationships, are resulting in start-up acquisitions at every turn:
Why do Autonomous Cars drive such cooperation? Maybe it is the cars’ origin – a unique world of technological cooperation. Founder of Comma.ai and iPhone unlocking, 26-year old George Hotz, has published open-source software and hardware driving agents in an effort to “become the Android of self-driving cars”. Consistent with this approach, Linux has devoted a foundation project to the mission of “creating open source software solutions for automotive applications.” The project, Automotive Grade Linux, or simply AGL, recently released the most advanced version of its platform yet. The AGL community is made up of nearly 90 companies with an impressive roster of Ford, Honda, Toyota, and more.
“This unprecedented level of collaboration is a clear indication that the automotive industry is adopting an open source development methodology that is resulting in faster innovation with more frequent software releases and new features.”
Dan Cauchy
Executive Director, Automotive Grade Linux
Maybe you’re not a fan of jumping on bandwagons. But with expectations of 21 million autonomous vehicles sold globally by 2035, it might be time for all of us to take a seat in any wagon pulled by the Autonomous Car.
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
Each social network has its own persona. We have the style icon, all looks, in Instagram and the hotheaded, no-filter urbanite that is Twitter. Then, there’s the socialite, Facebook, and the professional, LinkedIn – both who seem to be undergoing respective identity crises.
Traditionally a sharing point for family and friends, Facebook is crossing into professional realms. TechCrunch recently shared Facebook’s announcement that it is testing out job features. The idea is to give businesses the ability to promote job listings from their company Facebook pages. These recruitment features include job post creation, posting, and even the ability to receive applications. Similar to applying directly through LinkedIn, Facebook is considering a prepopulated format when applying through the network.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has tested LinkedIn-esque features. Last year, Facebook tested out “Profile Tags” that showcased a user’s interests, skills, and personality. Sound familiar? Take a peek at your LinkedIn endorsements.
LinkedIn users seem to be favoring the social aspect of the professional social network. My colleague finds about every third LinkedIn update on her feed to be more personal than professional. However, it’s difficult to pinpoint what’s driving this behavior.
A confusion of what is “work related” is possibly to blame for the increasing clutter on our LinkedIn feeds. For example, the included quote was pulled from a lengthy LinkedIn post.
The quote was accompanied by a big, smiling, “selfie.” Though work and career are essential themes to the post, the emotional description and personal image reflect Facebook’s intimate reputation more than that of the professional networking psyche originally associated with LinkedIn.
The pseudo-work related post formula has spread like wildfire across LinkedIn. Always, a personal photograph follows the assertion. Another “selfie” shot I came across this morning was captioned, “Ready for my first interview!” I can’t image any interviewer not checking the LinkedIn profile of candidates before meeting.
Alongside the emotional, personal posts popping up throughout your updates are the political statements. Statements an employee wouldn’t dare utter in the office are suddenly posted for every co-worker to see in dark gray Source Sans font.
Rather than these posts being overlooked, LinkedIn users can’t resist the bait. Each political post is accompanied by Tweet-worthy replies from every part of the political spectrum. Even posts without political themes are subject to these users.
There’s no confusion of these being unrelated to work (unless one’s industry is, in fact, politics) so what’s driving users to share these on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn may be, accidentally or not, encouraging unprofessional behavior. Just as Facebook has begun to mimic LinkedIn, LinkedIn is mimicking other social networks, especially those heavy on the social. Earlier this year, LinkedIn began developing its own version of Facebook’s “Instant Articles”.
Nowadays anyone can “publish an article” to LinkedIn’s “news” in the same style used by any unprofessional blogging platform including the micro-blogging network Tumblr, with its neo-new wave, post-punk persona. After publishing a blog an article, it will be conveniently placed into the view of their connections via LinkedIn’s “Recommended Reads” emails’ “Published by your network” section. If you play the game right, as outlined here by this highly-shared author, LinkedIn Editors will push your news to the featured #dailyrundowns. Though curated by the human hand, the Daily Rundown sometimes consolidates trends across all interests, creating one noisy summary. Take a look at the below headline on death.
In a world of information overload, the last thing we need is a noisy, one-stop shop. From retail to news to TV channels, our society is demanding filtered, specific access points to what we consume. If LinkedIn loses its sense of self, we lose a productive, professional networking tool and the relevant-information sharing possibilities it offers. On the flip side, if Facebook loses its carefree persona, I may have to limit the number of cat photos I post.
Still not sure the lines are being blurred? Check out this comment made on LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s recent update:
Across the globe, big data and IoT are revolutionizing Conservation efforts.
A concept first named in 1985, the Internet of Things (IoT) is undergoing a modern revival thanks to advances in big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. As consumers rush towards the benefits of wearable technology and smart house applications, a handful of revolutionary thinkers are applying the technology to benefitting our earth.
Smart Cities
30% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 came from electricity and heat production. In reaction, cities are incorporating climate change, resilience, and sustainability goals into their smart city aspirations. By 2020, half of all smart city objectives will include these concerns, as reported by @Gartner. Part of the smart city movement, Atlanta, Georgia has already begun incorporating sustainability into its city grid.
A smart cities innovator, Ingenu recently announced an Atlanta project. The Atlanta Machine Network intends, as stated by Peter Murray of @Dense Networks, to connect and monitor “everything from street lighting, traffic signals and parking” in an effort to reduce energy and water usage city-wide.
Conservation of Marine Mammals
Marine residents of the Indo-West Pacific waters, dugongs are threatened by “local fishing, destruction of habitat and illegal hunting” rendering them vulnerable for extinction. To help, IoT cloud provider, @Kii, has been supporting @Smart Earth Networks (SEN) and @Community Centered Conservation (C3) in a “citizen science” conservation project in the Busuanga region of the Philippines. The project equipped fishermen with basic smartphones, provided by local company @Cherry Mobile, enabling them to take photos when they spot the vulnerable marine mammals. Photos are uploaded via SEN’s app to Kii’s cloud, indicating dugong location through GPS. This allows C3 to map and evaluate the local dugong population for future, actionable, protection recommendations.
Close relatives of the dugong, manatees are also at risk. A project started in November, applies AI technology to manatee conservation efforts. Owned by @Google, AI protocol @TensorFlow is being taught with the aid of machine learning to spot manatees in aerial drone-produced photos. The ability would save hours of researchers’ time and lead to quicker, more frequent conservation efforts.
Anti-Poaching Efforts
Most threatened species, including the manatees and dugongs, lose a large number to poaching. AI platform, @Avata, is being applied to anti-poaching efforts in Uganda. AI learns poacher behavior and how to arrange effective security patrols so wildlife rangers can stay a step ahead of poachers.
Self-Awareness
Though IoT, AI, and big data are becoming extraordinary tools for environmental efforts, they are innately part of the problem. In the U.S. alone, data center electricity consumption is expected to reach an annual 140 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020, equivalent to an annual 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution. Fortunately, many of these companies are working towards self-improvement.
For example, with data centers accounting for 6.9% of all energy consumption in Singapore, active data companies are applying environmentally friendly practices:
In America, @GE and @Intel combined their respective offerings, Predix and gateway technologies, to create intelligent lighting – a networked lighting system that aims to improve efficiency. Each have applied the system to their own infrastructures including GE’s factory, Intel’s Arizona plant, and, soon, at Intel HQ in Santa Clara.
The Market
Through IoT, it is thought that information technologies can reduce carbon dioxide emissions globally by 20%. With major companies entering the IoT market, the percentage may be even greater. From telecommunications companies like Verizon to platform providers like Salesforce to IBM, companies across the board are making moves into IoT.*
*Entry moves provided by FirstRain market analytics
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
You’ve heard about the recent cyber attacks. Everyone has. Now, everyone is questioning his or her own cyber security status. Take a look at today’s trending business Cyber Security terms, provided by FirstRain.
As we think over what we can do to make ourselves more secure, vendors in the space are thinking about market opportunities. Playing on current consumer awareness, Aerohive Networks announced their new solution that they claim could have prevented the recent events. Even start-ups are getting noticed by addressing the trend. Circle, a mobile payment application, was quick to reassure consumers on the safety of mobile commerce.
More than just an awareness opportunity, top companies are tackling major business opportunities in the industry, as indicated by FirstRain’s exploration map below. IBM’s recent news release announced that their security division is releasing a cyber security offering to protect banking customers. With finance being the main concern, Visa and Intel announced a collaboration agreement to create better payment security for connected devices, ranging from personal computers to wearable technologies. The companies assign the rising Cyber Security opportunities to the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Echoing this, Microsoft plans to release a security program for its own IoT service, Azure.
Other signs that the Cyber Security Industry is the hot market of the moment include the spike in acquisitions made by major corporations of cyber security companies. Recently, Samsung Electronics announced it will be acquiring start-up enterprise software company, Tachyon Mobility to “build up their cyber security businesses with acquisitions.”
With Cyber Security heating up, this might lead to the security breakthrough, so to speak, that we need. Author and CIO, Tim Elkins states that “security isn’t an IT problem; it’s a business problem.” If so, IT might just start to receive the attention, budget, and opportunity to transform the industry. However, regardless if you are a vendor or a buyer, in tech or retail, following movements in Cyber Security is essential to business success. In other words, always be prepared because it just makes good sense.
This blog is part of an Industry & Market Series – analyzing what FirstRain users are tracking at the moment in order to gain advantage for the moment.
Today, we have Big Data and dynamic, sophisticated visualizations to help our businesses bloom with insight into predictive analytics that identify risks, specific market trends, and relationships. How did the business world unfold and understand information before the use of big data? The remarkable tools used before big data evolved may not be receiving enough credit. These tools incorporated logic, intuition and most of all great minds. Of course, where we are today propels far beyond the expectations of the scientist before our time.
Before the evolution of big data, scientists relied on data visualization in order to present data and information. Data visualizations ranged from wood blocks, to images, to tables and charts. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers gained tremendous insight and changed the world simply by organizing and deciphering basic data sets in new ways.
Edward Tufte, a statistician and artist, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University, wrote, designed, and self-published 4 classic books on data visualization. The New York Times described ET as the “Leonardo da Vinci of data,” and Business Week as the “Galileo of graphics.” ET teaches a one-day course on Fundamental design strategies for all information displays: sentences, tables, diagrams, maps, charts, images, video, data visualizations, and randomized displays for making graphical statistical inferences. Gaining knowledge of the past critically influences the future.
Read More here.
DM Radio provides a casual talk radio format for detailed discussions about the people, products, services and trends that comprise the IT industry. On this week’s episode “Rise (and Assimilation?) of the Analytics Databases” host Eric Kavanagh will lead a discussion around a whole new crop of analytics databases that have emerged. This week’s guests include FirstRain’s COO YY Lee, Zahid Akhtar of Deloitte, Mark Madsen of Third Nature, and Brian Gentile of TIBCO.
Join the broadcast to learn how can you use these tools to benefit your organization today!
Tune in Thursday February 12th 2015 at 03:00PM ET/12:00PST. Register here
Penny shared her insights into the changing relationships between CMOs and CIOs on The Economist‘s marketing blog, Lean Back. The post looks at how CMOs need CIOs more than ever as the marketing budget grows.
She writes, “Regardless of how much injustice CIOs feel, the success of their companies is increasingly reliant on their teams learning to align with CMO teams whose priorities—and very nature—are incredibly different from their own.”
Read the full blog post, “Why CMOs won’t lock CIOs out of the C-Suite,” here.
Living in Silicon Valley, running a software company with big ambitions I hear the question a lot. Is this another tech bubble? Isn’t is going to burst again?
The short answer is no.
Pundits covering tech tend to confuse valuation with long term value. We may well be in a valuation bubble but unlike the 2000 tech bubble the companies in question have deep, sustainable revenue models.
There are certainly some high valuations – per Fred Wilson’s view of frothy valuations in April – and these are driven by investor demand. As Father Guido Sarducci so wisely said in the 5 minute university, Economics is about supply and demand. When a few companies have sky high valuations in the public and private markets VCs are chasing good ideas with too much money again and so the early stage and later stage valuations may be getting silly for most companies, but some will be worth it.
Valuation is very different than long term value. Technology, and in particular software, is where long term sustainable value is being built. And when I say long term I am thinking hundreds of years. Marc Andreesen wrote very eloquently about this in the WSJ on Saturday in his essay Why Software Is Eating the World. We are at the beginning of a long era in which technology will reshape every aspect of our lives in ways we are just now beginning to see.
Just as the Industrial Revolution developed over more than 150 years in the 18th and 19th centuries and reshaped machines, industry, transport and the very nature of where people chose to live and work, technology is now reshaping the way we communicate, are entertained, where we live and work and shop and it is rewiring our kids brains for a new world. I’ve believed this for 20 years and the ups and downs of the tech world over that period have done nothing to dissuade me from that belief because technology is steadily, consistently and dramatically changing our lives. (Want to get some perspective on the 150 year change last time around – spend a day in Ironbridge in Shropshire, England.)
It’s happening right now because the pieces are now in place. As Marc writes “Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.”
The cost structure is right, the technology base is ready. In FirstRain’s case we have built a highly disruptive technology that changes the way business people use the web for their critical decision making. As Roger McNamee says in his thought provoking talk “Everything is Changing”, Google’s approach to indexing has peaked. People want apps designed for their specific need (he cites his investments like Facebook and Yelp), not one app for all needs, and they want it on their device of choice – which is a smartphone or an iPad. In our case the business need is even more specific than that. Our users want a business web app so they can tap into the breadth, currency and power of the web as a data source, but they want it tailored to their specific business and role, and they want it in a cost effective way.
Marc and Roger are just two rockstars in Silicon Valley but most people here agree with them (and not just because we are all drinking the same Kool-Aid). Yes we are dealing with some higher valuations, maybe that is a bubble, but the long term value being built in technology is real, and software is where it’s at. And what makes it even better is it a continuously exciting place to build a career, or even a company.
If you had the chance to sell your tech company for a great price would you – or would you play the long game?
This is a decision successful entrepreneurs end up facing and is a question for some tech entrepreneurs right now as we go through what is arguably another bubble – and there are some very interesting cases to think about – and think what would you have done?
Consider the Huffington Post: A success story to most people – purchased by AOL for $315M in February at a 6.3X multiple of $50M in revenue and very small profits. The last investor, Oak Investment Partners, tripled their money in just over 2 years which is a great result for a late stage investment decision. And yet, as Jeff Bercovici of Forbes writes in his somewhat damning review of the HuffPo/AOL honeymoon, the difference in interests that can appear between investor and entrepreneur in very visible in this case.
Fred Harman, the Oak partner who made the HuffPo investment, told Forbes “Our goal was an IPO rather than building up the company to be acquired by another media company” and that he and the HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau “were still inclined to roll forward as an independent company out of the belief that The Huffington Post could continue to rapidly scale and be the dominant social news company on the Web”. But for Arianna, AOL meant personal liquidity and a much larger stage and budget to build her dream with.
(full disclosure: my current company FirstRain is funded by Oak. They like to swing for the fences – as do I)
In contrast look at Zillow, which went public last week and, on 2010 revenue of $30.5M, now commands a valuation of greater than $1B. Is this valuation a surefire sign of a tech bubble? On Seeking Alpha screener.co writes that “The vast difference in valuation between a recent tech IPO and similar publicly traded competitors is not limited to Zillow” – Pandora’s valuation is almost as shocking as Zillow’s and outrageous in comparison to their comp RealNetworks. So long term public valuation (and so the team’s return) is at risk here.
In the enterprise social media space, Radian6 decided to sell to Salesforce instead of taking the long road. At a valuation of $326M and 10X revenue Techcrunch thinks SFDC overpaid but 10X trailing revenue is a terrific valuation for an enterprise software company and being integrated into Salesforce takes all the return risk out for the founders – plus SFDC smartly put additional options on as an earnout over 2 years (not unusual when a public company buys a private company and wants to keep the founders around). But also consider that maybe Salesforce creates a larger platform with deeper pockets for the Radian6 team to execute their vision on.
And waiting in the wings we have Groupon. They did not sell to Google last Fall for $6B and, if they can get over the questions about their business model and profitability, hope to IPO for $20B – and are lining up enough banks to make it happen.
All this leads to questions of timing – are today’s valuations fashion driven because tech IPOs are hot now? – and what would you do if it was you? I’ve been there, it’s a gut-wrenching decision.
If you sell:
+ You get secured liquidity and wealth for you and your team (especially if you are bought for cash)
+ You play on a larger stage, often with a larger budget
+ You may get access to many more customers on a larger platform
+ You create long term job security for your core tech team
- You lose final authority on strategy and budget
- Many members of your team (non tech) may lose their jobs
- You lose the essential joy of building your own venture
If you go public:
+ You get significant capital to grow your business with
+ You stay in charge (for now…)
+ Your investors get a great return in 6 months (after the lockup comes off)
+ You may get a significantly higher return over a longer time period
+ You continue to drive the strategy and M&A to execute you and your team’s vision
- Limited liquidity for you or your team for the foreseeable future
- You are running a public company (no picnic!)
- Your return is not secure, you are subject to volatile markets
… and there are many more pros and cons…
One of the best pieces of advice I got was to, in the end, focus on how my management team is successful and makes money from their hard work. Not my ego or my net worth. Not my investor’s return. My team, the ones who built the company with me. If they make money, everyone else will make enough.
In addition to creating a monitor to put an Eye on Japan’s Economy™ (which you can subscribe to here) we have also added a twitter feed of highlights on the same subject. You can follow @EOJE_FirstRain. @FirstRain_Japan.
Like Eye on Japan’s Economy™, the Twitter feed will select highlights of articles on disruptive market developments in areas like the Auto Industry, Base Metal Trends, the Semiconductor Industry and the Oil & Gas Industry Outlook, to name just a few of the topics covered, and macro economic trends of interest to business professionals.
